# Big Tech Cannot Be Regulated

Source: https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/big-tech-regulation-less-realistic-than-collective-ownership-by-yanis-varoufakis-2023-10
Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/Big-Tech-Cannot-Be-Regulated?index=0x65e5bf0742347b0b42aa0db46bacadb48930cbe80b983f58e80a1bc56946bb6d96048871
Submitted by lilping.eth on 2024-03-04 UTC, 2 upvotes, 1 comment

## Summary

Big Tech platforms cannot be regulated like the trusts, cartels or conglomerates of the past, according to the article's central claim, because their universal nature is why users rely on them. The article says that if regulators tried to break up Facebook or TikTok, enraged users would oppose them. It opens by asking whether Google, Amazon or Meta differ inherently from Standard Oil in the 1920s, IBM in the 1970s or Walmart more recently in their market power over people.

## Article

Economics

Big Tech is so profoundly different from other industries that it cannot be regulated like the trusts, cartels, or conglomerates of the past. After all, if regulators tried to break up Facebook or TikTok, they would be confronted by enraged users for whom the universal nature of these platforms is the reason they use them.

ATHENS – Modern societies have had to deal with exorbitant market power for more than a century. But is Big Tech’s power over us novel? Is Google, Amazon, or Meta inherently different from Standard Oil in the 1920s, IBM in the 1970s, or Walmart more recently?

## Comments

**rvolz.eth**: While it is true that the tools of the past won't help in the current economic-technological environment, I find it hard to believe that he will find many friends for collective action: "Every proletarian is turning into a cloud-prole during working hours and into a cloud-serf the rest of the time. Every self-employed struggler mutates into a cloud-vassal and a cloud-serf."