Opinion: If Big Tech mined like the Iron Range, it would pay its fair share

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As a parent of young kids, I am deeply concerned about the impact that social media is having on our families and our communities. The addictive design of platforms like Facebook and Instagram is draining our attention, darkening our self-image and fraying our social fabric. Studies have found increased social media usage associated with eating disorders in adolescents, behavioral challenges in school and even suicidal ideation.

Just recently, a story broke alleging that Facebook targeted beauty ads specifically at teens who had taken, then deleted, a selfie — intentionally preying on the insecurities that were once a normal part of childhood and are now a profit center for parasitic platforms.

These corporations are invading our privacy and profiting from everything they can find. And all of it will get worse as artificial intelligence rapidly matures, further obscuring the boundary between fiction and reality.

My kids, and your kids, deserve full childhoods with the opportunity to learn about our world and experience all the wonder that our state has to offer. They deserve to feel good about themselves and grow up with access to safe and reliable information ecosystems. Unfortunately, they are products in the profit-driven algorithms that make up our current social media reality.

Amid these long-term concerns, we at the Minnesota Legislature are facing some of the hardest decisions in decades. Impending cuts to the federal budget will hit the most essential parts of our state safety net, from health care for seniors and the disabled to education for children with special needs — the very sorts of programs we need to meet the challenges of our increasingly digital society.

The sorts of public service cuts we are facing will threaten the life and livelihood of millions of Minnesotans, including more than 150,000 residents in the Eighth Congressional District alone who depend on Medicaid or the Child Health Insurance Plan. They will imperil seniors, workers and vast numbers of children and single mothers.

Thankfully, there is a way for us to reduce the impact of these cuts. We can start to address predatory social media platforms and minimize cuts to essential public services by making Big Tech pay for what they extract from us — just like the mining companies do in the district that I represent on the Iron Range. The specifics may be modern, but the logic is time-tested.

In my district in northeastern Minnesota, we owe much to the mining industry that created good jobs and the strong regional economy that made the Iron Range what it is today. Mining is extractive and takes our land and minerals for profit. That’s why our state has always made those who profit from mining pay taxes to the state and the region based on the tonnage extracted, to support collective needs like local schools, community infrastructure, housing, environmental reclamation and unemployment benefits.

The same principle must now apply to the digital economy. Data mining by social media companies is the modern equivalent of taconite mining, only instead of iron ore, they’re extracting personal data. This personal data then generates profit using algorithms and targeted advertising. Now a new bill in the Senate allows us to treat this data mining just like we treat taconite mining in the tax code.

The idea is simple: The largest social media platforms will pay a few cents for every Minnesotan they hold data on. Using this design, the Minnesota Department of Revenue estimates that the bill would raise nearly $100 million per year once it is fully phased in, and it would affect only the largest 14 social media companies operating in our state.

These are major platforms like Facebook (Meta) and X (formerly known as Twitter), which are owned by the same mega-billionaires seeking now to create a new oligarchy in America. We simply cannot allow them the unfettered profits they seek.

My colleagues in the Senate span a wide range of political viewpoints, but very few think it’s right that corporations like Meta can make $20 billion and pay an effective tax rate of just 12% while hardworking Minnesotans struggle to make ends meet. The data mining tax is our version of the taconite production tax for the digital age. It will act as a backstop to a corporate tax code that is outdated and easily avoided by big-money legal teams.

The money we raise would help offset cuts to education, health care and human services, and would ensure that billionaires like Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos contribute to the communities and people making them so much money. It’s the least they can do.

Grant Hauschild, DFL-Hermantown, is a member of the Minnesota Senate.