Would Breaking Up The Monopoly Be the Way to go?
Standard Oil, Microsoft, and Facebook Have Been Named As the Monopoly That Disrupts The Society. What Should People Do To Discourage Monopoly, Increase Competition, and Regulation
Is Facebook a Monopoly? Yes! Without a Doubt. Most people believe that Facebook has been acquiring companies that may be a potential threat to them and would like the companies to be eliminated from the competition. Instagram, acquired by Facebook in 2012 for $1.0 Billion. Now it is worth about $100 billion. Facebook not only sees Instagram's potential but also the user and the advertising value of the platform. From the “When it Comes to Facebook, the Need for Action Has Been Obvious for a Long Time” by Kara Swisher, she encourages government regulation on the Big Tech Companies. I would agree that having the government balancing the power of the Big Tech is a great idea since it would subside monopoly causing Big Tech to lose the ability to “acquire the company with great potential then kill it”, and encourage fair competition. On the podcast “5G, Disney+, and All Things Social Media” by The Prof G Show with Scott Galloway, Professor Sinan Aral talks about increasing social network portability and data portability that could help to promote competition and breaking up the dominant players of the games. In telecommunication, we had seen it happened before. Before the data and network portability, we could not carry the phone number with us when we switch the service company and are not able to call people who are not in the same phone network as us. But now, we have the right to keep our number with us and call whoever we like without being in the same network. These had subsided the monopoly and promote fair competition as users have more freedom to switch services if they like to.
Downside Of The Changes
As we all know that the most concerning thing about using social media platforms is that we think it invades our privacy. We often see things that we search on the platform a few hours ago happens to be there on our browser. How much information we agree to provide and how often the media acquire our data, none of us seem to have a clear sense of those questions. I agree with the solutions that both the articles and the podcast mention above provided. However, I do also believe that there are still some issues within the solutions. When should the government step in? What characteristic is identify as a monopoly? How far should the government regulate? Having the government regulate the Big Tech but not discourage any innovation is a grey area that seems to have many problems yet to clarify.
Increasing network flexibility and data flexibility is great for users that love to take back control of their social media identity. We would like to be able to use the same identity to share our content on all the platforms seamlessly. However, we all know that different platforms have different privacy policies and different methods of acquiring our data, it would be a great topic for further discussion on how to increase the flexibility without further creating more privacy problems for the users.
When I was researching people's opinions of the Big Tech companies online, some of the people talk about having the Big Tech pay for the user data that they acquire. I think it is an interesting idea since we don't usually get pay for the data that we provided. But then I thought of how willing I would like to agree on giving up my privacy in exchange for some money. The answer is never. The only data that I would like to provide is probably not worth a penny for the Big Tech analytic purpose.
What I Believe Is A “Fair” Solution!
First, I agree that Professor Sinan Aral said that “breaking up a company does not [necessarily] solve the problem of the other company” Tearing the Big Tech or monopoly into separate companies does not mean that they cannot be the dominant player of the game. We should rethink the control that we granted to the dominant players. How often do we review the privacy policy of the website we use? I think most of us are never. When we create an account on site, we search for the “I agree” button more subconsciously than we look at the first word of the privacy consent. We gave up our rights to be acknowledged. I think that we should advocate a correct and careful way of providing data and having ownership of our data before we blame the company for invading privacy. I would also agree that the government should make a clear policy on regulating the media company regarding privacy and misinformation that can further protect the users.
Another point that I think that is great that Professor Sinan Aral talks about is the reflective feature. The media constantly ask the users if the headline or the content of the articles or videos are accurate. This can help to make people more alarmed about what information that they are intaking and stop the bad behavior of online spam and fake news. Promoting a better approach to using media. Conclusively, I think the best way to stop social media's negative influence is for the user to be more cautious and for the government to be state clear policy and balance the power of the Big Tech.
