There Is No Tech Backlash
Worse, we think there is one.
It’s fun, and increasingly fashionable, to complain about technology. Our own devices distract us, others’ devices spy on us, social media companies poison public discourse, new wired objects violate our privacy, and all of this contributes to a general sense of runaway change careening beyond our control. No wonder there’s a tech backlash.
But, really, is there? There certainly has been of a backlash, for a couple of yearsnow. Politicians have discussed regulating big tech companies more tightly. Fines have been issued, breakups called for. A tech press once dedicated almost exclusively to gadget lust and organizing conferences that trot out tech lords for the rest of us to worship has taken on a more critical tone; a drumbeat of exposés reveal ethically and legally dubious corporate behavior. Novels and movies paint a skeptical or even dystopian picture of where tech is taking us. We all know people who have theatrically quit this or that social media service, or announced digital sabbaticals. And, of course, everybody kvetches, all the time.
However, there is the matter of our actual behavior in the real-world marketplace. The evidence there suggests that, in fact, we love our devices as much as ever. There is no tech backlash.
Consider Facebook: It’s hard to imagine a more backlashable company. Facebook is widely associated with data breaches, the spread of dubious information and a basic deterioration of interpersonal communication. It was recently fined nearly $5 billion by the Federal Trade Commission for mishandling its customers’ data. And, given its ubiquity, it’s also a handy stand-in for the corporatization of online life in general. If you’re going to make a show of quitting a tech service, Facebook may be your best choice.
But according to its most recent quarterly report, the number of Facebook accounts used daily (1.59 billion) and monthly (2.4 billion) each increased by 8 percent over the prior quarter. Despite all the anecdotes you’ve heard about people deleting their accounts, the company’s flagship app added about a million new daily users in the United States alone. Revenue was up 28 percent. Even factoring in the F.T.C. fine, Facebook recorded a profit of $2.6 billion.
Facebook is not the only demonized tech platform; social media companies in general are routinely criticized as toxic swamps full of trolls, liars and bots. But again, there’s no evidence of any exodus. In the same quarter, Twitter added five million new daily users, and Snap reported that the daily user base of its flagship Snapchat app grew 7 percent, its best-ever performance as a public company. According to the Pew Research Center, 72 percent of Americans use some form of social media, a percentage that has risen steadily for years and shows no sign of flagging. (The people I know who quit Facebook all use Facebook-owned Instagram, WhatsApp, or both.)
Habits die hard. But even more remarkable than our apparent reluctance to ditch the technologies we love to dis is a fervent embrace of newer new things that seem, at the very least, worth approaching with caution.
Take smart speakers — the kind that respond to vocal prompts and questions — as an example. It’s exactly the sort of technology that gives people pause. Is this thing listening to me all the time? What about these weird stories of smart speakers laughing or cursing, or randomly recording a conversation and sending it to the owners’ contacts? The tech press has gotten better and better at chronicling the latest troubling answers — for instance, people may in fact listen to your voice activations as part of the process of refining the device’s functionality — and detailing what, if anything, you can do about it.
Nevertheless: As of last year, a little more than a quarter of American households owned a smart speaker, according to one estimate. The category leader is the Amazon Echo, equipped with the Alexa voice-recognition software; Amazon says it has sold more than 100 million Alexa devices.
Certain tech-use indicators have in fact leveled off in recent years, but that’s mostly because they correspond with categories that are already thoroughly established and widespread: Around 95 percent of consumers in the United States say they have or use a cellphone, and 89 percent have or use the internet, according to Pew. But dig a little deeper into that data, and it turns out that “new connected devices continue to emerge” and we continue to embrace them. In addition to voice assistants, smart TVs and wearable devices are growing in popularity.
Perhaps most remarkable, if you think we’re in the midst of tech backlash, is the traction of the aggressively hyped “smart home” trend, encouraging you to link your locks and lights and other household infrastructure to the internet. Amazon (which intuitively ought to be suffering in a tech-backlashed environment) recently announced that the record sales on its most recent Prime Day promotion included “millions of smart home devices.”
A particularly striking example touted by the company: gangbuster sales of Amazon’s own Ring video doorbell system and related home surveillance and security products. Ring has formed partnerships with hundreds of police departments, encouraging users to share video directly with law enforcement. And the device and its associated neighborhood-communiquĂ© app have been criticized for essentially encouraging racial profiling and general paranoia. Amazon has denied that Ring currently uses the company’s spookily named Rekognition facial-recognition software (which is used by law enforcement agencies and businesses). But as reports by BuzzFeed and others have pointed out, the device’s terms of service allow the company to use Ring-collected recordings to help develop new products and services. It’s not hard to imagine this pointing to a future when the camera will “recognize” who your neighbors are.
That sounds like the sort of potentially invasive and controlling technology that would spark a public outcry — if not actual marching in the streets, then at least intense pressure on public officials to keep the tech giants in check, and on the tech giants themselves. But as with other unnerving-sounding innovations — self-driving cars, beacon devices that let retailers track customers’ in-store behavior, delivery drones, cashier-less stores — we mostly just shrug. Or, as in the case of the Ring, actively participate in the aggressive spread of a technology whose potential implications are unclear.
So if there is no tech backlash, why is that? Probably a combination of factors. For starters, technology can be complicated, and most of us don’t bother to read terms-of-service agreements, let alone try to understand how something like Alexa, or even Facebook, really works. By and large, tech companies prefer it this way, and they either actively obscure the way their algorithms make decisions or passively encourage you to focus on the post-user-manual idea that technology “just works,” and you don’t need to worry about whys or (especially) hows.
Also, we really, really likemuch of what technology has to offer. There are good reasons to feel that way: Technology has improved the world, and our lives, in plenty of ways. But it often seems we are willing to overlook significant potential downsides in exchange for rather trivial payoffs. Apparently, for example, the main uses of voice technology are ordering a speaker to play music or asking for a weather report. (Another example, in the interest of full disclosure: My deep concerns about a citizen-enabled surveillance state have not yet inspired me to ditch my own Ring doorbell.)
Maybe being a more determined backlasher just feels hopeless. Quitting Facebook or boycotting Amazon seems similar to removing a drop of water from the ocean. Even an unfamiliar start-up backed with piles of venture capital has the resources to get around whatever entity is supposed to regulate it. The Luddites lost. Why not just learn to stop worrying and love the gizmos?
I wonder if the main reason more of us aren’t active participants in a tangible tech backlash is that we assume lots of people are. After all, the same tech lords people pay to worship at pricey conferences are now occasionally hauled before Congress, and there’s some sense that cracking down on them might be a political winner.
Sure, the actual plans for doing so tend to be vague (and those tech lords don’t seem to be suffering). But everybody’s complaining about technology all the time — there’s nothing more on-trend than lamenting our ephemeral hashtag culture. So it’s easy to believe that there really is a roiling tech backlash that will somehow head off any dystopian outcomes, while we lean back and ask Alexa whether it’s raining. In other words, it’s a virtualbacklash: so convincing we can really see it, if we just wear the proper goggles.
Rob Walker (@notrobwalker) is the author of “The Art of Noticing,” and a columnist for Marker.
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