This new wave of activity has further impacted the region’s cultural identity and political economy. Where once politicians used to beat back the efforts of the industrialists under the false platform of advancing the interests of the poor, they now claim credit for the economic benefits Rajarhat has brought. Commoners of the city now proudly boast the expansion of the northeastern sprawl, too; this new economic activity has positively influenced the region’s outlook, bringing a fresh wind of activity.
The circumstance of Calcutta teaches us an important lesson: the internet—and, more basically, connectivity—will persistently find ways to break inefficient and ineffective institutions; it is in the internet’s nature to tear down artificially imposed barriers by reaping the benefits of its low transaction costs and minimized frictions, challenging aging methods, industries, governmental regimes, and political systems in the process. This is the power of networks that Joshua Cooper Ramo has elucidated.2 In Calcutta, the commercialization of Rajarhat was the result of an organic economic interest—a steady but powerful wave of investment that came on the heels of an industry recognizing that a real economic opportunity was close at hand. And the fact that these changes have brought with them long-desired reforms to governance is a welcome effect.
The story of Calcutta can be generalized to second- and third-world cities across the globe; the capacity for networked communication has enabled economic activity that amounts to more than just fortunes: for cities like Calcutta, it represents hope for future economic success in an ever-globalizing world.
The Dark Underbelly of the Internet: A New Vector for Public Harm
The internet has had outsize impact on the global economy and, because of its democratizing force on the spread of information, humanity’s aggregate cultural richness. Indeed, its contribution to economic growth seemingly will only continue to grow. On the subject of international trade, John Stuart Mill wrote that “it is hardly possible to overrate the value, for the improvement of human beings, of things which bring them into contact with persons dissimilar to themselves, and with modes of thought and action unlike those with which they are familiar.… There is no nation which does not need to borrow from others.”3 As much could be said about sharing culture and information for the benefit of humanity; the internet has enabled us to communicate seamlessly for the first time in history. I have within my reach a wide selection of services I can use to transmit any data format at a speed and level of efficiency unthinkable just a few years ago. To say that this newfound capacity unlocks untold riches is an understatement.
But we must now assess the price of those riches. Recent years have seen a vast number of shocking incidents in the physical world enabled and facilitated by the rising use of digital platform services operated over the internet—incidents that extend far beyond the concerns around foreign influence in the course of American elections. In this section we discuss the emergence of these new harms.
Hateful and Violent Conduct
The atrocities against the Rohingya people of western Myanmar are front and center of these concerns. It was estimated in 2018 that Myanmar’s military and local Buddhists killed no fewer than 24,000 Rohingya people—a chilling number that the United Nations has unequivocally said constitutes genocide. In their review, UN investigators noted that many of the Myanmar officials implicated in the genocide charges had been using Facebook to disseminate hateful content to fuel the killings, rapes, and beatings of the Rohingya. What followed was a hard slap to the company: the UN noted that “although improved in recent months, Facebook’s response has been slow and ineffective. The extent to which Facebook posts and messages have led to real-world discrimination and violence must be independently and thoroughly examined.” Facebook responded quickly, noting the obvious: “The ethnic violence in Myanmar has been truly horrific. Earlier this month, we shared an update on the steps we’re taking to prevent the spread of hate and misinformation on Facebook. While we were too slow to act, we’re now making progress—with better technology to identify hate speech, improved reporting tools, and more people to review content.”4 With the delayed takedown of eighteen Facebook accounts and fifty-two Facebook pages, along with the presumable addition of some new staff who would monitor the company’s business in Myanmar and attempt to obviate another human rights disaster, the company seemingly felt it had washed the grime from its hands.
Populism and Radicalization
In another category, internet platforms have abetted the new prominence of populism, which has dramatically been on the rise not just in the United States and Europe but across the globe. The Rohingya genocide is one instance, but at another scale is what has happened in Brazil, where Jair Bolsonaro was elected in 2018 under the banner of the right-wing Partido Social Liberal.5 Bolsonaro maintains views ranging from the highly reprehensible to the deeply unsettling, including that women should not receive the same salaries as men because they become pregnant and therefore diminish work productivity;6 that “the state is Christian, and any minority that is against this has to change”;7 and that “if your child starts to become like that, a little gay, you take a whip and you change their behavior.”8 While some of his most eye-popping positions have been explained away, what Bolsonaro stands for is clear. More recently, his radical views have gone a significant way in exacerbating Amazonian deforestation.9
But what is also becoming increasingly clear is that YouTube propelled him to the presidency. Brazil, a remarkably diverse nation with significant population segments that have ethnic roots in Africa, Europe, and precolonial South America, is addicted to YouTube. Technologically speaking, that is more a natural phenomenon than a negative aspect. Google’s industry-leading video platform has become the go-to service for any topic under the sun—sports, history, music, movies, and all else—including, unfortunately, radical political content. Many young Brazilians have spoken openly about how YouTube was centrally responsible for their radicalization—expressed eventually through the ballot box with votes for Bolsonaro. The science appears to back up their claims about the platform. Researchers in Brazil and at Harvard University analyzed 331,849 videos and more than 79 million comments on the platform and studied a multitude of content pathways over the platform, entering common search phrases on YouTube, selecting top recommendations from the search results, and ultimately seeing where those recommendations took them.10 The answer: straight down the rabbit hole of far-right conspiracy. After leading a user to any video in the realm of politics or entertainment, it was often the case that the user’s pathway would run into far-right channels, and furthermore, once a user watched one far-right video, the platform would often recommend more. Bolsonaro was one of those conspiracists, and many Brazilian youth have described how they grew addicted to watching his videos and those of his followers.11
Other regions of the world have experienced similar outcomes, with platforms such as YouTube predicting citizens’ political preferences—perhaps incorrectly—and aggressively pushing users into compelling but hateful trails of conspiracy and radicalization. Over the many days I have spent watching videos of alt-right activists—Jared Taylor, Mike Cernovich, Stefan Molyneux, and, most engrossing of all, Richard Spencer—I grew to understand the likely impact of watching hateful political communicators preach radical ideas.
Localized Misinformation to Incitement
India has witnessed the spread of violence, particularly against the country’s most marginalized communities. There is no better example of an internet platform service derailing from its intended operation than the use of WhatsApp to spread hateful lies and conspiracies against targeted individuals.12 At issue is the use of encrypted messaging to large groups that has been used by various propagators throughout India to associate certain targeted individuals with rumors of child abduction and organ harvesting. As the messages have circulated, various groups have been incited to commit violence against the identified targets, including a series of local lynchings.13 The practice of sharing encrypted messages—such that hateful conduct becomes difficult to detect by the