RECOMMENDED READING
“Big Tech” has become shorthand for a potpourri of overlapping issues including monopoly power and market concentration; censorship and political influence; and consumer manipulation. Companies with business models as disparate as Apple, Google, Amazon and Facebook are treated as a monolithic challenge.
Making sense of that challenge requires dividing it into three separate parts. The first of these, as the “big” in Big Tech suggests, is the market power and anti-competitive behaviour of the companies that control the platforms on which key products and services are offered. Antitrust complaints are pervasive in the digital world because scale tends to be a source of value rather than cost, creating more contexts for natural monopoly.
Fortunately, Americans have considerable experience dealing with market power and monopolies. Google is the same kind of problem as Standard Oil and it has the same solution: it should be broken up. Facebook and Twitter are railroad-like monopolies and require utility-style regulation.
Recommended Reading
An Early Conservative Victory in the War on Big Tech
American Compass research director Wells King discusses a promising conservative bill to rein in Big Tech’s monopoly power.
How Technology Has Changed Our Jobs, Our Privacy, and Our Brains
American Compass research director Wells King discusses the wide-ranging effects of the digital revolution in an adaptation of Lost in the Super Market: Navigating the Digital Age.
Justice Thomas, Countervailing Power, and Big Tech
Justice Thomas has entered a hot debate about the best means of regulating social media. His approach to regulation tends to be more function-centric as opposed size-centric.
