The business model of large platforms is based on the surveillance of users, negatively affecting mental health and public debate – experts say in an interview with PAP. In their opinion, introducing a digital tax would be a good idea.
Last week, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Digital Affairs Krzysztof Gawkowski announced that the ministry is analyzing the creation of a model for financing investments in digital infrastructure and the development of cybersecurity competences, one of the elements of which is the introduction of a digital tax. He indicated that the Ministry of Digital Affairs will present a specific concept in a few months. Prime Minister Donald Tusk commented on the matter, saying that “maybe we will impose new taxes on big tech, or maybe we will not”. He added that “for now” the government is not working on this matter. “In line with the current fashion, I can say that we will see” – the head of government summed up.
Jan Oleszczuk-Zygmuntowski, co-chair of the Polish Economic Network, pointed out in an interview with PAP that most big techs do not pay taxes in Poland. As he said, some of them register their European operations in tax havens, e.g. in Ireland. This is what Meta, the former Twitter, and currently X, Apple or TikTok did – he added. If we buy services from them in Poland, e.g. advertising, we receive an invoice from a company registered in Ireland – he noted.
“Since the main activity of big techs is on the Internet and in many cases they do not pay taxes in our country, they are able to transfer money to their headquarters, to their shareholders, and spend it, for example, on great employee salaries, but in America,” he said.
He pointed out that some of the technology giants have subsidiaries registered in Poland, but these companies “pay very low taxes here”, in the order of millions of zlotys, which is a “ridiculous amount” compared to their revenues. “It is rather a fig leaf, a fraction of a percent compared to how much they earn on Polish territory,” said Oleszczuk-Zygmuntowski.
The president and co-founder of the Panoptykon Foundation, Katarzyna Szymielewicz, admitted in an interview with PAP that she agrees with the need for changes signaled by the Ministry of Digital Affairs. “The government should no longer tolerate a situation in which large technology companies reap gigantic, yet untaxed profits from a business model that is socially harmful because it exploits people's personal data and attention, violating their fundamental rights,” she assessed.
According to her , big tech companies collect huge amounts of data about users' online behavior, even though they never voluntarily or consciously agreed to it . “Thanks to such invasive profiling, they discover our sensitive data and various vulnerabilities, e.g. health, political views, sexual orientation or family situation. Then they use this knowledge to match ads and recommended content to the sensitivity of a specific person and in this way exploit their attention: riveting them to the screen for long hours, provoking scrolling and clicking on content that is the most engaging,” said the president of Panoptykon.
She pointed out that there are many studies from Poland and abroad showing that such compulsive use of social media has a negative impact not only on the mental health of users, as it increases anxiety, depression and digital addictions, but also on public debate.
“This is because social media platforms' algorithms favor the most engaging content, i.e. from super-influencers like Donald Trump and accounts focused on sensationalism, clickbait, or even deliberately playing with disinformation,” she pointed out. According to her, this mechanism “discriminates” against quality, balanced content from credible media. Its side effect is the growing polarization of society and the “disturbing” popularity of conspiracy theories, she added. “This is an ideal situation for populists and hostile powers that benefit from fueling internal conflicts. And very dangerous for democracy,” Szymielewicz assessed.
Oleszczuk-Zygmuntowski, who in 2020, as the then president of the Instrat Foundation, co-created the only digital tax proposal published in Poland to date, shares a similar opinion. As he pointed out, it is based on taxing profiled ads that “are based on user surveillance, on illegally collecting data about us.”
” Social media platforms also make children addicted, lead to suicide attempts, and to increased depression in society. The toxicity of this business model is undeniable among scientists, so I believe it is advisable to attack it, precisely through a digital tax, ” assessed Oleszczuk-Zygmuntowski. He recalled that, based on the proposal of the Instrat Foundation, the Left Club prepared a bill on the digital tax and submitted it to the Sejm in 2020. “However, the then Marshal of the Law and Justice Party froze it and it was never discussed,” he added.
The expert pointed out that in 2022, the Council of the European Union passed the Digital Services Act (DSA), which “forced” platforms to disclose data on what operations they conduct in Europe. “This, for example, showed us how huge the platforms from the porn industry are. They would also pay digital tax, as would Chinese sales platforms such as Aliexpress, Shein or Temu,” Oleszczuk-Zygmuntowski noted.
According to Katarzyna Szymielewicz , the state could invest the tax revenues in building a sovereign technological infrastructure, including cloud services , communication protocols and artificial intelligence algorithms that “give power over information”.
As she pointed out, the discussion on digital sovereignty had previously taken place in the context of TikTok and the risks associated with Chinese policy. “Now we see that the same or even greater risks are generated by dependence on American companies, which no longer behave like a neutral provider of a commercial service, but like an armed arm of the US administration,” she assessed. According to her, this should be an alarm signal for the European Union and the Polish government.
” If we do not want to get stuck in a relationship of colonial dependence, we need to reach for stronger cards. Taxation of the digital sector is one of them,” she pointed out. She added that in her opinion, introducing a digital tax 10 years ago, when transatlantic relations “were not so tense”, “would certainly have been easier”, but neither the PO nor PiS government did so. “We have slept through better times and although the current moment is not ideal, we have more to lose by giving up this field,” she assessed.
Digital taxes are in force in countries such as Great Britain (at 2%), France, Italy and Spain (3%), Austria (5%), Hungary and Turkey (7.5%), Japan (10%) and Canada (3%). They have not been introduced in Finland, Sweden, Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands, the USA and China. (PAP)
Monika Blandina Lewkowicz
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