By Rosa Miriam Elizalde on July 31, 2025
Cover of the book “The tyranny of screen nations”. Akal Publishing
In The Tyranny of Screen Nations (Akal, 2025), Andalusian journalist Juan Carlos Blanco issues a warning that is as lucid as it is disturbing: we are no longer governed by states, but by digital platforms that have concentrated economic, cultural, and political power that eclipses that of many nations and transforms citizens into pieces of a social experiment on a planetary scale.
With a calm and seductive style, the essay starts from a fundamental perplexity: how is it possible that mass addiction to mobile phones does not occupy a central place in public debate? To explain why the drug is the screen, Blanco offers us a map of the technological tsunami that has swept through the last two decades, led by corporations such as Google (Alphabet), Meta (Facebook and Instagram), Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, and X (formerly Twitter). A few monopolies have assumed powers traditionally held by the state without ever having been endorsed by democratic will or subjected to accountability mechanisms.
These “screen nations,” as the author calls them, decide what can circulate and what must be silenced in their digital domains, while amplifying certain discourses and suppressing others through opaque and unappealable algorithms. They do not collect taxes, but they impose commissions, fees, or blocks that constitute a closed system without competition or oversight. They spy, segment, penalize, and sometimes collaborate with political actors, as evidenced by the Cambridge Analytica scandal, which exposed electoral manipulation orchestrated through the use and abuse of personal data.
They have even replaced state functions: Google knows more about traffic than the police; Amazon resolves commercial disputes more effectively than many public offices, and Meta is capable of shaping political debate with greater impact than any traditional media outlet.
Blanco compares these megacorporations to the old colonial octopuses—the Dutch East India Company or the United Fruit Company—which exercised de facto control over vast territories. Today, domination is projected onto digital ecosystems that condition the daily lives of billions of people. Each screen becomes an invisible border, and each user a voluntary subject who surrenders sovereignty in exchange for entertainment, convenience, or permanent connection.
This immense power operates without effective checks and balances. Screen nations are not accountable to parliaments, courts, or constitutions. When they violate our privacy, foment hatred, or abuse their dominant position, they rarely face real consequences: sanctions, such as those imposed by the European Union, are mere operating costs for these companies. Their influence is such that they can twist public policy, shape collective imaginaries, and alter the course of elections.
The author identifies five consequences or “capital sins” of this new regime. The first is the systematic violation of privacy: we have surrendered our most intimate data in exchange for seemingly free services, without weighing the implications of such a surrender. The second is the fragmentation of our attention, captured by digital designs conceived to retain us through addictive stimuli.
This is followed by the deliberate proliferation of disinformation: not a failure of the system, but an essential cog in a model that monetizes polarization. Added to this is the collapse of traditional journalism, dragged down by the logic of SEO and digital precariousness. Finally, there is the devastation of small businesses, swept away by platforms that impose rock-bottom prices and increasingly degraded working conditions in the name of efficiency.
A particularly valuable part of the book is the collection of critical voices from within the system. The cases of Tristan Harris, a former Google designer, and Jeff Hammerbacher, a former Facebook executive, reveal that even some of the brains who designed these systems now recognize their toxic nature. “It’s depressing that the best minds of my generation are thinking about how to get people to click on ads,” Hammerbacher goes so far as to say. Harris himself compares Google’s control centers to behavioral control rooms over a billion people. They are the “Silicon Valley repentants,” key figures in understanding that the problem is not technological, but moral, political, and structural.
Without falling into a simplistic rejection of technology, Blanco acknowledges the benefits it has brought to medicine, education, and access to knowledge. But he warns that these advances should not serve as an excuse to normalize subordination.
In the face of techno-libertarian enchantment, he promotes a critical, active, and organized citizenry capable of regaining control over their lives. And he demands, from a political standpoint, regulatory frameworks and institutions that limit the concentration of power of these corporations. https:// (The Tyranny of Screen Nations) (https:// acortar.link/ZrdASx) is an urgent call to action.
Juan Carlos Blanco proposes breaking the spell of passivity, dismantling the narrative of technological inevitability, and reclaiming a future in which digital tools are at the service of human beings, not the other way around. It is not about turning off our screens, but about stopping living on our knees in front of them.
Source: La Jornada, translation Resumen Latinoamericano – English