Tech influence is big business. Earlier it was media personnel, now, bureaucrats and retired government officials are courted by big tech recruiters. Building up narratives and navigating power corridors will get more complex with the public mistrust of large tech companies rising and the Personal Data Protection Bill likely to become reality any time soon. These companies are already making it clear they’d challenge some of the bill's provisions in the court.
We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. Today, we bring you a story that lays bare how the public affairs playbook of big tech—which had become homogenous—is changing big time. Ironically, like the businesses themselves, concentration hit their wholesale public policy approach. While this wave of change was triggered by a Wall Street Journal investigation last year which led Facebook (now Meta) India’s policy head to resign, other companies saw the risk of concentration in both internal and external teams. Then there were some transgressions which acted as wake-up calls.
A lot is at stake—Amazon and Facebook both grew more than 40% in the year ended march 2021; the former employs nearly 160,000 people in India, either directly or indirectly. Google fielded 1,322 content take down requests from the Indian government in the first half this year, only second to Russia's take down requests. The search giant uses a consultancy founded by a former anti-trust regulator to “talk to the Competition Commission of India about the positive impact of Google in India”.
Roles are now getting more specialised. With state elections on the horizon, both Google and Meta are looking to hire someone to work with the political parties to educate them on content moderation and hate speech. Shouldn’t be a tough task, big tech and government have had a cosy relationship.
“If you carry a card from a big tech company, that's enough to get you an appointment anywhere in the government," the mantra of today's political era in India