by This is the question many people ask when they see tech companies expanding into untypical areas. “What’s the point if your products are already so successful?” is a question that follows. Many tech companies, however, feel that their respective missions are severely limited by the fact that they are just, well, companies.
So tech companies gnash their teeth and obey, occasionally shaking their fists at the sky, promising that “one day, things will be different”. To some people, this is a vain promise; however, a quick look at companies acquired by Google reveals that Google, in particular, and large tech companies, in general, are all striving to be useful and full-featured to the point of being irreplaceable. So why stop when you can solve all of your problems by… establishing a virtual state of your own?
States
A virtual state of Facebook/Google/WeChat (or another company that suddenly emerges and renders our predictions obsolete) is an idea so sci-fi and utopian that it is a fun challenge in and of itself to try to keep a straight face when discussing it — after all, a state must have these features: population, territory, sovereignty, and government. But what happens when we project them on a social network?
- Its population are the users, coming from different countries, cultures, and backgrounds (creating the ultimate melting pot)
- Its territory consists of the virtual space (i.e. web servers) and electronic devices capable of opening the app; alternatively, as any social network is purely a product of intellect, its territory can lie in the minds of its users: they think within the social network paradigm and live within its ecosystem — communicating via its messenger and sharing and learning thanks to its functionality.
- Its sovereignty is the independence as a private company: the management is free to enact certain restrictions and control their product the way they see fit.
- Its government is the executive team, provided with the absolute authority to make decisions.
“Alright, this makes for a fun thought exercise, but the joke has been playing out for far too long”, skeptics may say. We might think that an Internet website is merely a platform and does not unite its users in any real way — just like people who prefer apples over oranges are not a purely homogeneous group, Facebook users are not Facebook people; they vary greatly in their beliefs, actions, and worldview — and this criticism is justified.
However, as we use tech products like Facebook, we start to embrace the values they (supposedly) broadcast — and all tech companies are incredibly vocal about their values: privacy, free speech, freedom, and so forth. Facebook has a ban feature that it uses to exclude users who do not wish to conform with its code of conduct, so if a given user is not banned, they actually share Facebook’s values.
Why?
At some point in time, the CEO of any large tech company (especially those whose product is designed to connect people) is bound to think: “Are we developing a platform to post cat pictures… or is there something more to it?” As the user count reaches 2.3 billion (this is the number of monthly active users on Facebook), the product’s importance becomes ever so obvious: no state even has 2.3 billion citizens!
Despite their power and influence, tech companies have to operate within jurisdictions of regular states, which often prevents them from realizing the most daring ideas. For better or worse, tech companies and regulatory agencies have agreed to decide what is best for the end-user together — so one day, these companies may have wondered: “What if we had the absolute control?”
Virtual states have an important advantage: regular law systems have no idea how to approach them. “Real” states have had centuries to figure out how to resolve conflicts in a civilized manner, establishing codes of conduct for almost every sphere imaginable: civil law, commercial law, maritime law, air law, military law, and so on. With tech giants rising to prominence within a short time span of 10-15 years (a split second in terms of traditional jurisprudence), countries and their regulations were not agile enough to react to these changes. After all, pushing a software update is much quicker than adopting a law.
Creation
When establishing a virtual state, tech companies would probably have two blueprints to follow: integration or separation. The former can be showcased by WeChat’s intertwinement with the Chinese government, functioning as the ersatz Internet: it offers messaging, social networks, payment service, web platform, and more. The latter method is still a work-in-progress, but its approach is far more creative.World’s biggest messaging service, Facebook Messenger, is hoping to re-introduce the blockchain technology to the public with its own currency, dubbed “Facebook Coin”.
In a world where so much pleasant experience is money related, control of the financial system becomes a solid foundation of a prospective virtual state. Having exercised their automation skills within the company, tech giants can take this expertise to the extreme and have AI algorithms do all bureaucratic work — with automation, do you really need thousands of clerks?
Effects
Switching to “digital governments” can turn out to be a social revolution, producing both positive and negative effects — just like the industrial revolution or the invention of sliced bread, it is not self-evident that a Facebook passport is ultimately a good or a bad thing.
Although this close integration brings about convenience, its side effects include dystopian things like classroom surveillance or country-wide social credit system. Moreover, it is unclear whether goal-oriented CEOs should have the right to impose their personal values on the entire digital population.
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