Fervor Grows for Regulating Big Tech
Summary
The time is now. Government regulation, public pressure, worker action — all these and more are needed to rein in the big tech companies, which have been allowed to operate largely unhindered for too long. That was the view of most participants at The New York Times DealBook conference task force — made up of eight technology experts in the public and private sectors — looking at the question of “How Big Should Big Tech Be?” “I think we have lived for decades now with no regulation, so to speak, of tech,” said Chris Hughes, a co-founder of Facebook and now the co-chair of the nonprofit Economic Security Project. “And the time’s come due for regulation, for structural solutions and for a general cultural rethinking of how to ensure that these platforms are working for us rather than us working for the platforms.” The challenges include increasing concerns about how private data is collected and used; the spreading of false information that could influence the 2020 election, by both foreign and domestic actors on social media; and whether behemoths like Facebook, Google and Amazon should be split up.