Welcome to the 21st Century
Calling for antitrust laws that are fit for the digital age. The MadHATTERs Editorial, 5 August 2020
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Meaningful regulation was one of the main takeaways from last week’s theatrics aka the Big Tech antitrust hearings. In closing Wednesday’s over-five-hours-long session, subcommittee chair David Cicilline stated that US antitrust laws, written over a century ago, need to work in today’s digital age. And to achieve this Congress will have to ‘think outside the box’, his fellow Democrat Joe Neguse said to Axios.
We can’t wait to see what this’ll look like. They’re not new, these calls for anti-competition regulation that’s fit for the 21st century. Back in Nov 2018, digital civil rights group Electronic Frontier Foundation called for stronger antitrust enforcement to better protect competition, markets and consumers. One of the main contentions (also argued by Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes): it’s no longer relevant to use price to measure consumer welfare, given the free-services-for-your-data practices of today’s digital economy.
But US regulations still lag behind Europe, whose efforts to modernise its antitrust laws are now entering what its competition commissioner Margrethe Vestager calls a ‘new phase’: potentially a major overhaul of the EU’s digital economy where tech companies could be regulated like the telco and finance industries. That said, it is still an economic craft to know how to balance regulation and markets. Digital economy markets are still young, and the adtech hegemony is strong. There is a risk that regulation can kill fledgling business and economic models if regulators get it wrong.
Also, having regulation in place is one thing; enforcement is another. The GDPR for instance, has been critiqued for not really showing its teeth despite being around for two years now. Execution of enforcement is also another issue, as Vestager discovered recently when her 2016 decision to make Apple pay €13 billion in back taxes was overturned.
Still much more work to be done to properly regulate these tech companies and rein in their monopolistic power, while ensuring the societal benefits are not killed off. One thing’s for sure: we’re in for a long haul.
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