The issue of corporate social responsibility represents a long-lasting debate in academia and the corporate world, with solid arguments on both sides. One side claims businesses should operate for the sole purpose of increasing their profits. The other side advocates that corporations have to embrace goals of public benefit. For now, decisions about corporate purpose still remain the prerogative of directors and investors.
However, sometimes corporations create services and technologies that transcend business interests and become essential to our existence, inherent to social cohesion, and the exercise of civil rights. For example, during the Arab Spring, Facebook became more than just a social network––it was the main platform for freedom of expression, communication, and organization of protests, which were otherwise banned or restricted in those countries. In many parts of the world plagued by dictatorships, repressive regimes, and failing democracies, Facebook, Twitter, Google, and Apple became popular not just because they offered a “cool” product, but because they brought opportunities to access information, speak freely, and organize against oppression. Authoritarian governments couldn’t create such platforms, and these markets soon provided Silicon Valley with another competitive edge.
But recently we have been witnessing concerning developments. Big tech companies are making more and more concessions to authoritarian regimes around the world in desperate efforts to keep their businesses running there. An increasingly unsettling question is whether corporations will adhere to the values they promote, such as progress, free speech, and diversity––or will they ultimately bend to the whims of oppressive regimes? To borrow from Professor Colin Mayer, can big tech companies “solve the problems of people profitably, and not profit from causing them?”
As an example of this disconcerting trend, we can look into the recent federal elections in Russia where Google and Apple were forced to remove an opposition-created app from their stores called Navalny amid increasing pressure from Russian authorities. The app was meant to coalesce opposition votes against “United Russia”––the pro-establishment party––through a system called “smart-voting,” which many thought was the only efficient tool to withstand the enormous pro-government machinery.
Despite oppressive laws and restrictions on protests and free speech in the country, the Russian internet remained mainly untouched and uncensored. As a result, it became the last stronghold for anti-regime advocates. Now it stands to fall, not without the help of Google and Apple. Access Now, an internet freedom group, declared that “[t]his is bad news for democracy and dissent all over the world. We expect to see other dictators copying Russia’s tactics.”
The tech giants defend this decision as necessary after Russian courts found Navalny’s organization as being extremist, banned the app, and threatened to initiate a criminal investigation against local employees of Google and Apple. However, skeptics claim that this is just an excuse to mask Silicon Valley’s ulterior motive: to continue business in Russia.
This is not the only “compromise” between big corporations and authoritarian regimes. In 2016, Google and Apple removed the LinkedIn app from their stores after a Russian court banned it due to a regulation which mandates data be stored within national borders. Earlier this year, Apple had made another concession to the Kremlin when it decided to obey a law which required Apple to include in its products a pre-installed package of “state-approved” software, such as browsers and messaging apps. Freedom House, an international non-profit, declared that “[t]his is part of a broader trend we’ve seen in countries like Iran, Turkey, and India, where authorities are trying to replace frustrating foreign apps with domestic equivalents, more tightly controlled by the government.”
Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook also routinely remove some of their content in many authoritarian countries based on court decisions, requests from authorities, or national laws and regulations. For instance, in 2016 the New York Times reported that Facebook was developing censorship features to access the Chinese market. Those intentions did not materialize since Facebook is still banned in China, but the willingness of big tech corporations to please authoritarian governments for a chance to reach their markets speaks for itself.
From this perspective, the debate on corporate purpose is more important than ever. What in Silicon Valley may be just a marketing strategy for profit maximization, on the other side of the world could mean a lot more. What might be a pure business decision for Apple or Google, may be a chance to fight for free elections in Russia, stand against oppression in Turkey, or advocate for women’s rights in Afghanistan.