The Rise of Global Online Corporate Censorship – How OpenAI, Google, and Microsoft Are Becoming Digital Gatekeepers

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The Rise of Global Online Corporate Censorship: How OpenAI, Google, and Microsoft Are Becoming Digital Gatekeepers

Since the start of the democratization of AI and the launch of the first version of Chatgpt, OpenAI, Google, and Microsoft have emerged as dominant global corporate players limiting AI-content generation for their free and paid clients globally and the companies/organizations using their APIs through their embedded unchangeable automated and human content moderation systems and policies.

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Under the guise of ‘protecting users globally from harm’, these thre large tech companies are de-facto introducing a new form of global online censorship, one that operates beyond the reach of national and regional regulators or democratically chosen governments.

Global Corporate Content Moderation: The New Global Morality Police

These tech giants enforce centralized standards of “acceptable” and Responsible AI online behavior and AI content creation, guided by corporate value-driven business strategies, US-based cultural values, and the need to comply with the U.S. legal framework. However, these standards are applied globally, regardless of regional and national laws or cultural and/or religious biases. Through AI-driven content moderation systems, billions of users and companies using their APIs are subjected to embedded, hard-coded automated online AI-censorship, where content deemed “inappropriate” in line with their proprietary ‘Responsible AI Frameworks’ is flagged, removed, or downranked. Their corporate leadership and consequently their AI-systems and models ‘say no’ to many legitimed requests by users globally.

While their ‘Responsible AI Frameworks’, policies and AI-systems are supposed to ‘aim to prevent harm—such as hate speech or misinformation—they overreach, silencing legitimate voices and ignoring regional and national diversity. This intransparent global approach de-facto shifts power from individuals, governments, national parlements and national legal systems to corporate boardrooms in the U.S. and the proprietary algorithms and ‘banned words lists’ of 3 companies incorporated in the U.S.

Outside the Reach of Governments

Unlike traditional forms of online censorship tied to state authority in authoritarian dictatorship, online corporate AI-censorship by these three large tech companies exists in a legal gray zone. They:

Evade Regional, National & Local Oversight: Operate globally online and apply their rules universally and globally, overriding regional, national and local laws or cultural differences.
Lack Democratic Accountability: Content moderation policies are crafted and hard-coded internally, influenced by commercially value-based business strategies, corporate cultures internal corporate risk management, mainly US-based shareholders, and geopolitical pressures—not by democratically chosen representatives in for instance the EU and individual memberstates like for instance The Netherlands.
Scale Beyond Borders: Their biased automated AI content moderation systems enforce their corporate decisions instantly and globally online, bypassing the processes of democratically chosen governments and national and regional legal systems and regulators.

Examples of Global Online Corporate Censorship

OpenAI: Restricts outputs on politically sensitive topics or controversial ideologies, often reflecting a very conservative US-perspective that suppresses, it ‘bannes’ legitimate content generation and content sharing and different forms of discussions in many other jurisdictions.
Google: Uses algorithms to filter search results and moderate content on platforms like Google Gemini and YouTube, enforcing their universal global rules that often conflict with regional and national norms, such as political dissent in authoritarian countries, cultural debates.
Microsoft AI: Implements strict customizable content moderation for its AI services with proprietary, but defaults to conservative, sanitized ‘allowed’ outputs that is supposed to ‘cater to global corporate clients’ rather than online communities in general.

They all use propriatery ‘banned words lists’ to prevent many different forms of content generation including AI-generated political cartoons and any kind of what they perceive as ‘explicit content’ to be blocked.

Implications of Global Online Corporate Censorship

Erosion of Sovereignty: Governments lose the ability to regulate content within their borders as global corporations impose their own corporate and culturally US-biased rules.
Cultural Homogenization: A single U.S. based corporate-defined global morality imposed by these three tech companies suppresses cultural diversity and erases regional perspectives.
Freedom of Expression: The freedom of expression of any free or paid user of their AI-models is structurally impacted, as their automated moderation systems block in a hidden hard-coded, embedded way a wide range of contenttypes.

What Can Be Done?

To address this unchecked online power, solutions must focus on giving the power back to users, increasing transparency regarding policies and systems, and holding these companies accountable. Options include:

Empowering Users: Allow users to set their own content moderation preferences.
Transparent Policies & AI-Systems: Require companies to publish their algorithms and moderation criteria and allow customers and regulators to change the embedded rules and banned words lists in line with national legal frameworks and national cultural values.
Regional & National Oversight: Multinationals and corporates have to comply with national and local regulatory systems. And the same thing applies to tech companies. That means that regional and national regulators should be able to check if their AI-systems and AI-models comply with regional and national legal frameworks. Their is no ‘International’ oversight possible as there is no ‘International Legal Framework’ applicable to everybody worldwide.
Designing And Developing Neutral AI-Systems: Tech companies should step back and go back to their historical strategy of designing and selling neutral software solutions.

Conclusion

The global digital red ocean business strategy and digital red ocean marketing strategy of OpenAI, Google, and Microsoft has introduced a new form of online corporate censorship that operates beyond the reach of national governments, national parlements, national legal systems and national regulators. As they de-facto shape the boundaries of acceptable speech, acceptable AI-creativity and acceptable AI-productivity, these three US-based companies are acting as global morality police, imposing their own corporate and cultural values on billions of users. This online trend threatens not only freedom of expression but also the online sovereignty of nations, governments, parlements and legal systems and the diversity of cultures.

Give Power back to The People, National Parlements, Governments and Regulators

Large corporate companies should not have the authority to decide what is ‘allowed’ or not and enforce a single global standard of global morality. It is up to individuals to decide how they want to use software to create and share content in whatever form. And democratically chosen national representatives and lawmakers, people in the national legal system and national regulators should be able to decide what kind of content is allowed to be created using AI-systems and AI-models for private and for public use.

In the mean time, I personally choose European and Dutch values-based approaches to AI-generated content creation and sharing for me and my customers and friends. In defense of democracy and freedom of expression and against any form of dictatorship and dictators. Using online available generative AI-systems and AI-models to generate and share the content I want.

Including AI-generated political cartoons, AI-generated political deepfakes and other forms of AI-generated content. Including generic AI-generated explicit content and different forms of content their AI-systems ‘say no’ to. Including my personal interpretations of their ‘banned AI art’ and ‘banned AI words’.

Reach out.

If you want to learn how to generate and share any type of content’ you want and/or and/or Leaving The Corporate Rat Race with your virtual team, online network or online community, email us today and we wil contact you for a free intake call and fast online learning for your virtual team, online network or online community.