Over the past decade, Big Tech has grown from a powerful industry—with Apple, Alphabet (Google’s parent company), Amazon, Microsoft, and Meta reaching a combined revenue of more than $1.5 trillion in 2023, generating $327 billion in profit—into something else entirely. Beyond profits, a recent development has underscored Big Tech’s role as a key player in global politics.
On January 7, Mark Zuckerberg unveiled Meta’s new policy guidelines, promising “more speech” and rejecting regulations from “countries in the European Union and Latin America.” But even more alarming than Meta’s decision to end fact-checking on its platforms in favor of a moderation system based on community notes was the explicit alignment with the policies promoted by X CEO and Donald Trump acolyte Elon Musk.
This shift marks a new era in Silicon Valley’s quest for unchecked power. Two of the largest Big Tech companies have now pivoted to an agenda that dismantles control mechanisms while explicitly aligning themselves with Trump’s administration.
In his video speech, Zuckerberg criticized the European effort to regulate technology, signaling that Meta would resist regulations from Global South countries attempting to enforce digital rights protections. His stance echoes Musk’s attacks on oversight, reinforcing the idea that Big Tech considers itself above the law.
These developments have caused many in the United States to fear that misinformation and rightwing propaganda will proliferate unchecked on these platforms as Trump has begun rolling out his authoritarian policies. Democratic Congressmember Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York warned in a video that “every social media platform, mass social media platform in the United States, has been taken over by the right wing”. But the danger extends far beyond the United States.
In Europe, Meta and other tech giants have long opposed the Digital Services Act (DSA), a regulatory framework that requires transparency in algorithmic decision-making, stronger content moderation rules, and accountability for platforms that allow illegal content to thrive. The DSA is one of the most significant global attempts to rein in the power of Silicon Valley, striving to set a precedent for holding Big Tech responsible for its impact on democracy.
Latin America lacks a legal framework as robust as the DSA, and the region remains one of the biggest battlegrounds for Big Tech lobbying.
An example of this occurred in Brazil on May 2, 2023. On that day, the Big Techs mobilized an aggressive lobbying campaign to block the vote on Bill 2630/2020, also known as the “Fake News Bill”. This bill aimed to regulate both business and economic activities of Big Techs, requiring transparency in algorithmic ranking, imposing accountability for disinformation, and setting limits on monopolistic practices. In response, companies like Meta, Google, and Telegram used their own platforms to manipulate public perception, displaying alerts discouraging support for the bill.
The scale of Big Tech’s financial power in lobbying efforts is staggering. In 2023 alone, Big Tech companies collectively spent more than $97 million euros lobbying the European Union, with Meta and Google leading the charge. In the United States, tech lobbying expenditures surpassed $50 million to influence operations between January and September 2024.
In Brazil, the lobbying war has intensified. Meta and Google launched influence campaigns, working behind the scenes to pressure lawmakers and even promote third-party organizations that framed Bill 2630 as a “censorship bill”. They successfully obstructed the vote. Big Tech used financial and technological power to directly influence national legislation, preventing countries from establishing even basic safeguards.
In Mexico, tech giants have leveraged political mobilizations to block regulations that would increase accountability for election-related disinformation. In Argentina, lobbying efforts have focused on delaying antitrust measures that would limit Google’s dominance in the search and digital advertising markets. In Colombia, Meta and other platforms have pushed back against content moderation policies, arguing that any restrictions on online speech could harm “digital freedom”—despite evidence that their platforms amplify hate speech and political manipulation.
This coordinated corporate offensive highlights a new form of techno-feudalism, where a handful of private companies control digital infrastructure, shape public debate, and dictate policy outcomes—often in direct opposition to democratic governance.
Unlike Europe, where regulations are already in place, Latin America remains one of the last frontiers where Big Tech can still operate with minimal restrictions. Thus, the region is a prime target for their lobbying and influence campaigns. Also, Latin American public institutions, including governments and universities, have become embedded in Silicon Valley’s ecosystem.
In Brazil, the federal government relies on Microsoft for its cloud infrastructure, office productivity tools, and email services. In 2022, the Ministry of Education signed an agreement with Microsoft to provide Office 365 cloud solutions for more than thirty-eight million students. Also, Brazilian universities depend on Google’s cloud infrastructure.
In 2021, Google abruptly ended unlimited cloud storage for educational institutions, forcing Brazilian universities to pay for services that had become integral to research and administration. In Argentina and Mexico, Microsoft and Google dominate cloud computing services for public institutions and educational platforms. As an example, Cecilia Rikap, a researcher specializing in technological dependence, highlights that these companies have a virtual monopoly on Latin America’s knowledge economy.
This is why Zuckerberg’s recent remarks are particularly alarming. His stance against Latin American regulations suggests that Meta and other Silicon Valley giants are doubling down on efforts to suppress any form of oversight in the region, reinforcing a digital Wild West where they dictate the rules. But beyond deregulation, this also highlights a deeper issue: digital colonialism. By embedding themselves into Latin America’s critical digital infrastructure, Big Tech companies are not just profiting from the region; they are actively shaping its technological landscape in ways that prevent local innovation and reinforce long-term dependence.
If Latin American governments fail to push back, the region risks becoming a corporate-controlled digital colony, where Big Tech dictates national digital policies and suppresses any attempt at regulatory sovereignty. We seem to have arrived at an AI-Cracy, a system where unelected tech billionaires govern digital spaces through algorithms, economic coercion, and technological dependence.
Some governments are attempting to resist this growing corporate dominance. Argentina (considering bills 848/20 and 1453/20) and Chile (with twelve legislative initiatives under discussion) have introduced digital rights discussions to limit Silicon Valley’s unchecked power, aiming to hold tech companies accountable for spreading disinformation and manipulating public opinion. Meanwhile, there is a proposed amendment to the law to assign the Federal Telecommunications Institute the role of regulating social media platforms, overseeing political advertising and algorithmic decision-making, challenging the opaque systems that shape online discourse. However, the House of Representatives in Mexico recently passed a constitutional reform to dissolve the agency entirely.
These efforts indicate that the fight for digital sovereignty is far from over. But the real challenge is whether governments can withstand the overwhelming financial and political power of Big Tech. This is not simply a policy debate. It is an existential struggle over who controls the Internet and, by extension, who controls real political events. If national authorities cannot enforce meaningful regulations, digital platforms will continue to operate as extraterritorial entities, more powerful than elected governments, with the ability to shape elections and public debate.
And in this way, AI-Cracy emerges as a new form of oligarchic power, where governance is dictated not by democratic institutions but by corporate algorithms designed to maximize engagement, extract data, and manipulate behaviors. This dictatorship of Big Tech is not imposed through military force but through technological dependence, economic blackmail, and algorithmic control. The outcome will determine whether Latin America can build independent digital ecosystems or remain indefinitely subordinated to Silicon Valley’s unchecked influence.
