At his annual dinner at the World Economic Forum in Davos, George Soros a holocaust surviving successful hedge fund manager born in Hungary spoke on how this current moment in history to him is painful due to lost freedom of mind caused by companies like Facebook and Google which to him are tech monopolies. These monopolies as well as Donald Trump are both threatening democracy around the world according to Soros.
We at The Society value Soros’s criticisms of Google and Facebook in this article because he is famous for having bet on the devaluation of the pound in 1992, just like we are currently betting on the devaluation of centralized information and these tech monopolies. It is truly flabbergasting that a holocaust survivor like Mr Soros believes social media platforms are obstacles to innovation due to their power to shape people's attentions however, he is not alone in thinking so.
Soros goes on saying predictions like Google and Facebook’s days were numbered due to tax policy and regulation, Donald Trump will be gone by 2020, social media will continue to have far-reaching political consequences like Donald Trump, and lastly that the European Union and Margrethe Vestager will be the social media companies nemesis in the coming future. Some more about the EU and Vestager is that the EU has no internet giants of its own and Vestager is known for going after US tech giants like Apple, Amazon, Google etc.
We at The Society find it is important to share that according to BBC news Facebook declined to comment on this article and Google did not immediately return a request for comment because we believe it says a lot about them. The biggest takeaway from this amazing article was "Internet monopolies have neither the will nor the inclination to protect society against the consequences of their actions," which will in turn lead to Societies in crisis.
Read the full article available here:
http://www.bbc.com/news/business-42856915
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