MIT Technology Review: How to regulate Big Tech without breaking it up. “US regulators are seriously questioning whether companies like Amazon, Apple, Google, and Facebook have too much power. This new push to curb the might of Big Tech has a catchy solution: break up the companies. But a breakup will be hard to force, and the history of trustbusting suggests that many other solutions are possible.”
antitrust
New York Times: Antitrust Troubles Snowball for Tech Giants as Lawmakers Join In
New York Times: Antitrust Troubles Snowball for Tech Giants as Lawmakers Join In. “The federal government is stepping up its scrutiny of the world’s biggest tech companies, leaving them vulnerable to new rules and federal lawsuits. Regulators are divvying up antitrust oversight of the Silicon Valley giants and lawmakers are investigating whether they have stifled competition and hurt consumers.”
Harvard Business Review: Don’t Break Up Facebook — Treat It Like a Utility
Harvard Business Review: Don’t Break Up Facebook — Treat It Like a Utility. “I contend that Facebook and firms like it have become natural monopolies that necessitate a novel, stringent set of regulations to obstruct their capitalistic overreaches and protect the public against ingrained economic exploitation. While this option does not exclude the possibility of also pursuing a policy of break-up, I believe it is the more important objective and must take precedence. To understand why, we can apply rules of thumb from traditional competition and antitrust policy analysis, in which policymakers consider the economic dynamics of the industry in a step-wise manner.”
Quartz: Instead of breaking up Facebook, the EU may force it to share its data
Quartz: Instead of breaking up Facebook, the EU may force it to share its data. “Should Facebook be broken up? Despite her reservations about the massive social network, the EU’s competition commissioner, one of the few people with the authority to pursue such an aggressive action, doesn’t think it’s the best way forward.”
TechCrunch: Friend portability is the must-have Facebook regulation
TechCrunch: Friend portability is the must-have Facebook regulation. “Choice for consumers compels fair treatment by corporations. When people can easily move to a competitor, it creates a natural market dynamic coercing a business to act right. When we can’t, other regulations just leave us trapped with a pig in a fresh coat of lipstick. That’s why as the FTC considers how many billions to fine Facebook or which executives to stick with personal liability or whether to go full-tilt and break up the company, I implore it to consider the root of how Facebook gets away with abusing user privacy: there’s no simple way to switch to an alternative.”
New York Times: Chris Hughes Essay on Breakup Draws an Objection From Facebook
New York Times: Chris Hughes Essay on Breakup Draws an Objection From Facebook. “Facebook pushed back Thursday after Chris Hughes, a billionaire co-founder of the company, argued in a New York Times Op-Ed essay that the company should be broken up and regulated. ‘Facebook accepts that with success comes accountability,’ Nick Clegg, Facebook’s vice president for global affairs and communication, wrote in a statement. ‘But you don’t enforce accountability by calling for the breakup of a successful American company.'”
New York Times: It’s Time to Break Up Facebook
New York Times: It’s Time to Break Up Facebook. “The company’s mistakes — the sloppy privacy practices that dropped tens of millions of users’ data into a political consulting firm’s lap; the slow response to Russian agents, violent rhetoric and fake news; and the unbounded drive to capture ever more of our time and attention — dominate the headlines. It’s been 15 years since I co-founded Facebook at Harvard, and I haven’t worked at the company in a decade. But I feel a sense of anger and responsibility.”
