Mr. Roger McNamee:

It is a great pleasure to be here and to address the grand committee. I will reinforce everything that Dr. Ryan said. Everyone should think of that as the fundamental backdrop to what I am saying.

In the US and other countries, the institutions of liberal democracy are losing their ability to serve the needs of constituents. Many factors contribute to this. Historically reduced funding has been a major one, but, increasingly, the dominant role of technology in society is undermining the ability of liberal democracies to operate. Internet platforms have exploited the weaknesses of democratic institutions and accelerated their weakening. Platforms have positioned themselves to replace democratic institutions with initiatives such as Alphabet's Sidewalk Labs waterfront project in Toronto, Facebook's Libra cryptocurrency, Amazon's efforts in law enforcement and Microsoft's services for governments. The success of Internet platforms has produced harm to public health, democracy, privacy and competition on a global basis. The driver of that is the algorithmic amplification of hate speech, disinformation and conspiracy theories as well as micro-targeted advertising based on massive surveillance. Similar to the chemicals industry of the 1950s and 1960s, Internet platform profits are inflated because the industry does not pay the cost of the harm it causes. This is important. As Professor Shoshana Zuboff has noted, Internet platforms are gradually displacing democracy and consumer choice with algorithmic processes.

To protect competition, governments have an existing anti-trust toolkit. To protect public health, democracy and privacy, however, they need new tools. They need to constrain the business model of surveillance capitalism. The best way to do this is to declare that personal data are a human right, not an asset. This would limit business models to first party intended uses of data. There would be no third party commerce or use of private data, no predictive models based on personal data, no web tracking and no corporate surveillance. In this, I would like to go beyond the Brave solution.

Internet platforms behave as though governments lack the tools and political support necessary for meaningful regulation. Our challenge is to prove them wrong. We have to be prepared to shut them down for periods of time when they misbehave, given that they are clearly defying democratic governments and will persist in doing so until there is an incentive to change. I have spent 34 years as a technology investor. At one time, I was a mentor to Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg. I cannot be absolutely certain that I am right, but I am very confident that I am not wrong. I thank the grand committee for its time.