If we want to solve the disinformation crisis, we need to fix the perverse incentives created by the online advertising market through structural and regulatory solutions.
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Sorry, Mr. Delrahim: Big Tech’s Worst Abuses Can’t Be Cured Without Stiffer Regulation
Simply adding competition in the tech sector won’t solve problems like privacy abuses or discrimination. Competition is needed, but regulation is a necessary element of any tech solution.
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Designating Tech Platforms as “Information Fiduciaries” Would Do Little to Address the Source of Their Power
The notion that Facebook, Google, and Twitter should be assigned fiduciary duties toward their end users has gained broad support in recent years. However, this proposed framework invites policy misfires since it fails to grapple with the structural dimensions of tech platforms’ power.
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Did Facebook and Google “Blackmail” EU Experts to Avoid Discussing Their Market Power?
A new report by the journalist network Investigate Europe claims representatives of Facebook and Google pressured members of an EU working group on fake news to drop proposals that would have called for an examination of the role played by tech platforms’ business models and market power in the spread of disinformation online.
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“Facebook Is Unaccountable to Shareholders, to its Users, to Government”
At the Stigler Center’s annual competition conference, Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes called for the unwinding of Facebook’s WhatsApp and Instagram acquisitions and the creation of a new regulatory agency to oversee digital platforms.
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How to Protect Competition and Consumers in Digital Markets
While some markets may self-correct, rapid self-correction in markets dominated by large digital platforms is unlikely. The economy and market structure subcommittee of the Stigler Center’s Digital Platforms Project proposes ways to reform antitrust law and regulation in order to adequately deliver competition to consumers.
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The “Biggest Puzzle in Economics”: Why the “Superstar Economy” Lacks Any Actual Superstars
A new study finds that the contribution of superstar firms to US productivity growth has decreased by more than 40 percent over the past 20 years.
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The Road to Digital Serfdom? The Visible Hand of Surveillance Capitalism
Surveillance capitalism is not the capitalism of old, writes Harvard professor emerita Shoshana Zuboff in her new book The Age of Surveillance Capitalism.
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Facebook Is a Threat to Democracy — and the US Has a Responsibility to Rein It In
Facebook and Google have failed at self-regulation. If we want to avoid an authoritarian future, we need to reduce the influence of internet platforms, writes early Facebook investor Roger McNamee, author of the new book Zucked.
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“It’s Crucial to Break Up Facebook”
Columbia law professor Tim Wu on The Curse of Bigness, neo-Brandeisian antitrust, and the lessons we should learn from the first Gilded Age.
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Editors’ Briefing: This Week in Political Economy (December 9-16)
Congress misses an opportunity to scrutinize Google; the IRS is on life support; Johnson & Johnson reportedly knew for decades that its baby powder contained asbestos; the British Labour Party considers a break-up of the Big Four accounting firms; and will Obamacare once again be upheld by the Supreme Court?
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Editors’ Briefing: This Week in Political Economy (December 2-9)
Documents released by British Parliament show Facebook’s attempts to stifle competition; the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau no longer protects consumers; provider consolidation is driving up US health care costs; and how big really is America’s digital divide?
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