Technology is neutral: Big Tech is a problem. If we want to tackle the harms, behaviours and activities of Big Tech, it isn’t enough just to try and regulate them. They are powerful enough to run rings around our regulators. To tackle the wide diversity of harms emanating from the big tech sector, and to tackle the cascading monopolisation of our economies that it is facilitating, we need first to tackle its power. For example, the big five western tech firms have acquired over 1,000 firms since 1990: we must stop them buying more competitors – and break them up.
Recently, Amazon made a series of proposed commitments to the European Commission, promising (with, it seems, its fingers crossed behind its back) to behave better in terms of wielding its awesome market power over other businesses using its platforms.
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We co-hosted a wide-ranging, rich and highly energetic conference event yesterday in Brussels. The recording is now available.
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Update: the EC accepted Amazon’s (modified) commitments and we responded, here. We just sent a submission to the European Commission (EC) on Amazon, which we led and co-wrote with the Centre for Research on Multinational Corporations (SOMO,) co-ordinated with a group of civil society organisations.
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Welcome to the latest edition of The Counterbalance, the newsletter of the Balanced Economy Project. Update, June 14th: UK Tribunal agrees that Meta’s acquisition of GIPHY harms competition - Privacy International. Frances Haugen, the celebrated Facebook whistleblower, briefly became a bit of a cult hero for exposing the giant platform's toxic role pushing algorithms that encourage teenage suicides,
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