Big Tech is so profoundly different from other industries that it cannot be regulated like the trusts, cartels, or conglomerates of the past. After all, if regulators tried to break up Facebook or TikTok, they would be confronted by enraged users for whom the universal nature of these platforms is the reason they use them.
ATHENS – Modern societies have had to deal with exorbitant market power for more than a century. But is Big Tech’s power over us novel? Is Google, Amazon, or Meta inherently different from Standard Oil in the 1920s, IBM in the 1970s, or Walmart more recently?
If not, then perhaps we can regulate Big Tech by means of legislation harking back to the United States’ 1890 Sherman Antitrust Act. Lina Khan, the chairperson of the US Federal Trade Commission, is valiantly trying to do just that.
Sadly, it won’t work. Big Tech is so profoundly different that it cannot be regulated like any of the trusts, cartels, or conglomerates we have hitherto encountered.
ATHENS – Modern societies have had to deal with exorbitant market power for more than a century. But is Big Tech’s power over us novel? Is Google, Amazon, or Meta inherently different from Standard Oil in the 1920s, IBM in the 1970s, or Walmart more recently?
If not, then perhaps we can regulate Big Tech by means of legislation harking back to the United States’ 1890 Sherman Antitrust Act. Lina Khan, the chairperson of the US Federal Trade Commission, is valiantly trying to do just that.
Sadly, it won’t work. Big Tech is so profoundly different that it cannot be regulated like any of the trusts, cartels, or conglomerates we have hitherto encountered.