You can buy a great house with four hundred and fifty thousand dollars, but one person spent this amount to buy a house in the three-dimensional virtual environment of Metaverse to be in the neighborhood of a famous rap singer named Snoop Dogg. Only in January 2022, Metaverse properties were sold for eighty-five million dollars. (1).

The crazy market of real estate was a good source of news for the media for a while, but these news only reflect the insane behavior of a handful of wealthy kids in the virtual world, rather than indicating the failure of the new generation (Generation Z and Alpha) in understanding the principles of ownership and digital sovereignty.

The historical process in which people lost their material ownership and political sovereignty has been repeated in the virtual space. In the real world, most people are responsible for producing goods and services, but they do not own anything. Similarly, in the virtual world, users are the main producers of media content for social networks, but giant technology companies profit from this information. If the new generation only sees digital ownership as a means of accumulating wealth, advanced technology companies will build their empires on the backs of these new digital slaves. This article is a story of the early stages of the formation of a digital dystopia.

If we set aside philosophical-legal principles about the right to ownership and sovereignty, all of them are true about digital ownership and sovereignty. Just as personal ownership of citizens must be protected from intrusion, digital ownership and personal information of individuals on the internet must also be legally protected. Just as no institution or authority has exclusive authority over political decisions, i.e. people’s decision-making on how to manage collective ownership, advanced technology companies should not have a monopoly on access to information and free flow of information in the virtual space.

Like previous generations, but this time in a shorter period of time, Millennials (1981-1996) and Generation Z (1996-2010) have handed over their digital dominance to advanced technology empires. To understand the extent of this digital monopoly and tyranny, we will consider two cases:

1- Google and its search engine have the monopoly and complete capability to make your business visible and accessible to people. The prioritization of Google’s search engine in displaying search results on the first pages is the main determinant of what products and services are sold and what type of news and information are available to people.

The level of this monopoly and power of Google is to the extent that even governments have struggled to control it; for example, in 2017, the European Commission fined Google 2.42 billion euros for abusing its search engine to give advantage to its own businesses.

2- While Facebook and Twitter do not produce any media content, they have access to the largest social networks. Due to its digital dominance, Uber is the largest taxi company in the world, even though the owner does not even own a car. (3) Airbnb, the largest provider of accommodation for travelers, does not own any properties. Wikipedia itself does not produce any specific content, but it is the largest encyclopedia in the world. Add to this the marketplaces, which are the largest digital stores in the world, without any physical inventory. In other words, people work as slaves for free on the farms (platforms) of these large companies.

Similar to the long history of class struggle for acquiring ownership and governance rights, there is also a brief history of digital struggle for acquiring digital governance.

In the late 1990s, the dot-com bubble and the rush of businesses to use the internet gave the promise that small businesses and entrepreneurs could compete with large chain companies through their own websites. However, the result was completely opposite; marketplaces swallowed up these businesses and now they are just small rooms in these huge markets. These companies no longer even bother to directly involve themselves in production and distribution.

The next chapter in history was the short struggle of digital currencies and the invention of blockchain. Blockchain promised people the ability to exchange their own digital money without the need for the exclusive financial industry of banks and governments and central banks. Technologies like blockchain and cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin sparked an anarchist dream of replacing fiat currencies with Bitcoin in the minds of the younger generation. It was these anti-centralization and pseudo-anarchist motivations that led to the success of Bitcoin. Although Bitcoin promised the younger generation a decentralized financial industry, many of them fell into the trap of another centralized business called cryptocurrency exchanges. Some of these exchanges were scams. Apart from these cryptocurrencies, they never truly entered the world of small-scale transactions, but instead, due to their scarcity, Bitcoin was used as an asset for savings; so Bitcoin and other surviving coins became a valuable asset alongside gold and silver and found a place in the world of traders instead of the daily transactions of people. Governments and media outlets welcomed these functional changes in cryptocurrencies and

The second generation of cryptocurrencies, such as Ethereum, promised the younger generation that they could do more with cryptocurrencies than just exchange them. For example, they could be a suitable method for attracting risk-taking investors for entrepreneurial companies. Therefore, by creating Initial Coin Offerings (ICO), cryptocurrencies could once again provide opportunities for small businesses. However, in reality, for every ten legitimate entrepreneurs and projects, there were hundreds of fake and fraudulent projects that aimed to scam people. The increasing price of Bitcoin also attracted many people to the crypto market, making them vulnerable to these imaginary and false projects. People would buy the coins of these projects, but after their launch, their value would quickly plummet because there was no real business behind these risky investments.

NFTs (None-fungible tokens) are digital images and other digital content whose ownership is recorded by a smart contract on the blockchain under the name of an individual. They are not a new invention, but have gained widespread popularity in recent years. Although NFTs can apparently be used to sell digital artworks and other digital content (providing an opportunity for digital artists to free themselves from art dealers), in reality, this market is for hype and speculation. For example, the image of this article is a small digital image that was sold for over twenty-three million dollars, and the seller was not a famous artist, but rather two relatively unknown programmers. (5) In 2012, over half a billion dollars worth of digital content was sold under the name of NFTs.

Unfortunately, the short history of the digital fight against the hegemony of large companies has come to an end. Every time there is hope that the internet can tip the balance in favor of small businesses, grassroots media, entrepreneurs, and a heavy direct and public financial industry, the situation worsens. Perhaps we can draw the bitter conclusion that the nature of capitalism and the logic of a free market have dominated centralization and monopolies on the virtual space, just like anywhere else.

The right to digital sovereignty (equivalent to the right to political sovereignty of the people) does not necessarily come with an increase in digital literacy of the people. Generation Y, with their boring blogs and websites, Millennials with their superficial social networks, and now Generation Z with their terrifying memes, have not been able to seize digital sovereignty. The US government has so far resorted to anti-trust laws to control digital ownership; on the other hand, governments, understanding the power of these companies, are trying to restrict the free flow of information with their cooperation. The reality is that Google, Amazon, Twitter, and Facebook are too big to fail; therefore, there is little hope that government legislation will revive the people’s digital sovereignty in the virtual space.

The revival of digital sovereignty by the people can be achieved by the people themselves. To begin with, the term “digital sovereignty” must be transformed from a specialized term used by experts into a concept that the general public is familiar with and accepted as a value and standard. The emergence of blockchain has introduced the term “decentralization” into the everyday language of the younger generation. The same must happen for the concept of digital sovereignty. The younger generation must be familiarized with the necessary powers and responsibilities to preserve their digital sovereignty. If this happens, the principle of digital sovereignty will create standards that platforms will be forced to comply with; for example, user and community control over algorithms and regulations for the use of social networks can be a good starting point.

Notes:

1- Chirinos, Carmela, recently paid four hundred and fifty thousand dollars to be a neighbor of Snoopy Dog in Metaverse.

Ferchoun Magazine.

February 2, 2022.

2- The European Commission fined Google 2.42 billion euros for abusing its dominance as a search engine by giving illegal advantage to its own shopping comparison services.

Official website of the European Commission.

June 27, 2017.

3- Goodwin, Tom, the battle is for customer relations.

Tekk Ranch website.

March 4, 2015.

4- Tochi, Linda, Habab Dotcom.

Tektarget website..

5 out of the 10 most expensive annuities sold to date [updated in June 2022], .

Sensoryum website.

June 10, 2022.