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Sanskriti Sinha
Mar 30, 20225 min read

Big Tech: A Dire Need for Regulation

"Control communication and you control the people communicating."

― A.D. Aliwat, Author of 'In Limbo'


Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, and Microsoft (GAFAM); have you ever heard of them? Today's world is ruled by technology and in its big and booming industry, these companies have risen to the top to become household names. Each of these five is known to dominate their respective sectors and constitute what is considered 'Big Tech'.


The 'Big Five' started as small companies; however, over the past few decades, they have grown to be so large that almost everybody depends on them. Amazon started as a mere bookstore, Apple as an unorganized and unpopular computer store, Facebook as a connecting platform for only Harvard students, Google as a simple search engine and, Microsoft as a second-choice provider of an operating system for the International Business Machines Corporation (IBM). Now, Amazon is the ultimate supermarket, Apple is a lifestyle-seller, Facebook provides social media worldwide, Google gives access to all knowledge through its incredibly complicated algorithm and Microsoft is the dominating software. These companies are supremely inspiring, so why is everyone against them?


The reason is that their astronomical success has gained them a terrifying amount of power. This has allowed these companies to control the world in various fields, including data, politics, and economics.


The Big Five are infamous for stealing their users' data and sharing it with other establishments for targeted advertising. Facebook alone has had two huge scandals in the past three years: the Cambridge Analytica data mine which strongly influenced the 2016 United States presidential elections and the 2021 data theft from half a billion of its users.


The leaders of GAFAM can control the flow of political information and are shaping up to be unelected global leaders. Consider the incident in November 2020 in Myanmar when Facebook's insufficient enforcement of its directorial laws resulted in the spread of posts glorifying violence against Rohingya Muslims and ended in ethnic genocide.


Market monopolization is a significant topic as GAFAM tends to use improper methods to shut down competition which prevents new companies from entering and developing the industry while maintaining an unfair monopoly. In 1998, Bill Gates was summoned before Congress for being too domineering and faced charges till 2001 when he successfully stopped them from breaking Microsoft into two. Although Gates states that the case lost his business by distracting him during his marketing of Windows Mobile, Microsoft remains a tech giant and is second in Cloud Market Share- a Cloud Market is a digital shop that provides various services. Similarly, GAFA had to attend an antitrust hearing in July 2020- antitrust laws limit powers of major companies to encourage competition. Concerns regarding Apple's policies to decide whether an app is allowed on the App Store and its ever-changing rules were asked to Tim Cook. In addition, Jeff Bezos was questioned about Amazon's treatment towards third-party sellers and their reference as 'internal competitors'. Furthermore, Sundar Pichai was interrogated about the scandal of 2010 which involved Google stealing restaurant reviews from its competitor, Yelp, and forcing Yelp to either allow Google to repost their reviews or be delisted from the search engine entirely. Mark Zuckerburg was interviewed about his behaviour towards Instagram's founder, Kevin Systrom, who viewed Facebook's development of a very similar photo app to be Zuckerburg's 'destroy mode'. All of these questions were met with unclear responses. Finally, politician David Cicilline delivered the closing statement, "This hearing has made one fact clear to me: these companies as they exist today have monopoly power. Some need to be broken up, all need to be properly regulated and held accountable."


In March 2021, Germany, Denmark, Finland, and Estonia united to encourage the European Union to restrain Big Tech. The Australian Parliament recently implemented the 'News Media Bargaining Code' bill commanding services like Google and Facebook to pay news providers for using their content. The 'Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021' introduced by the Indian Government aims to increase accountability of tech companies and mandate provision of 'Grievance Redressal Mechanisms'.


The aforementioned crisis had been seen over a century ago when John Davison Rockefeller owned 90% of the oil industry in the U.S. As with the Big Five, several people believed that his success was built on unethical practices. Hence, in 1911, the U.S. Supreme Court decided to break down Rockefeller's corporation into thirty-four different companies. Today, numerous people hold the opinion that the same should be done to the Big Five. The excessive power GAFAM has is extremely dangerous, and, fundamentally, that Big Tech be regulated properly in the near future. As well said by Cicilline, "The names have changed, but the story is the same."



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