Should Big Tech be broken up or highly regulated?

[Zinneke]

I listened to an intelligence squared podast debate about this and was wondering what the denizens of this forum thought of how to approach Big Tech in general.

The argument for breaking them up is that their worst practices can be attributed to their oligopoly and the fact that competitors to their markets are stifled. If newer enterprises entered the market and offered their services based on being more trustworthy it would be beneficial to the consumer. Regulating them is counter-productive as government simply doesn't have the means to control content or acts.

The argument against is that it won't stop tech companies spying on their users because that's the best product outcome, and that regulating them helps steer them into the right direction far better. Also something like Facebook relies on everyone being there.

[Frodo]

We already tried the regulatory option during the New Deal era, and I can't say that had a happy outcome for Americans then with established companies ossifying into oligopolies to the detriment of the economy, which led to Ronald Reagan having to break it all up with dramatically cutting taxes, government spending, and regulations.  No, I think we will be better off with the trust-busting option, with the upshot of potentially beginning a new era of entrepreneurialism.  

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

Yes, Facebook and Google are rather obvious, and Microsoft, Amazon, Apple, and Oracle are candidates as well.

[Pink Panther]

I'm going to have to say yes. It's clear that Big Tech has grown way too powerful and have essentially become monopolies.

[Associate Justice PiT]

     Agreed. The internet was supposed to democratize communication and information, but with the rise of Big Tech it has had the opposite effect and centralized the dissemination of information to an extent previously unimaginable.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Break-up of Big Tech would be harmful for both Big Tech firms and the consumer, by removing convenience and economies of scale, and forcing everything to fund itself would just result in still more ads and things currently free being locked behind some paid membership or something.
Youtube would be particularly badly affected by being severed from Google.
Regulation is the only option, between these two.

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

The big issue is they are clearly Too Big To Fail right? Arguably the impact of Meta, Microsoft or Alphabet going Lehman would cause an absolutely insane global crisis, given the tendrils they have everywhere: much of the rest of the internet now relies on them, their softwares power the intranet of most institutions, most people are reliant on them for all private and professional communication, a huge amount of small/medium businesses and self employed individuals are reliant on them etc. Even if there was some managed continuity so we don't just see all their services vanish,  the idea of their key assets (people's private data) being sold off to private equity is a non starter.


This is probably worst in the case of Meta, as they have the most klaxon alarms running (never been very profitable, always over promised to this day, huge debts, maniacal leadership from dictator-ceo), but any one of them could be cooking the books, and drag a whole lot of the economy with them.

[Del Tachi]

The solution is stronger privacy laws that limit what information Big Tech can collect/sell about their users, which will generally have the effect of generating more well-balanced content for people to consume