From GDPR to The digital services act in the UK, the regulations on Big-Tech over the years have increased ever since Facebook’s Cambridge Analytics Scandal. The implications of big-Tech has questioned the social wellbeing of individuals through social media, the privacy considerations, and role in political elections. However, an unpopular opinion is if the regulations are potentially too-extensive. This is because most of the GDP in the economy depends on the financial developments and services that Big tech offers. Therefore, this blog post intends to question how financially dependent we really are on big-tech.
According to the Tech Monitor (2017), around 43% of EU businesses are “significantly” dependent on platforms in order to receive turnover. The level of dependence is not only limited to platforms but also other sectors such as finance to energy. As an example, you might have a book shop that puts their advertisements on google, that customers pay with AliPay and that you use the energy provided by Big-Techs.
The dependence has grown ever since the COVID-19 crisis as a lot of brick-and-mortar companies have transitioned to go online to companies such as Amazon Marketplace. However, the links in order to buy the projects from Apple and Android smartphones and tablets, Facebook apps and Microsoft tools give buying links to friends, families and colleagues which also facilitate the buying processes. Before the pandemic, there was a lot of scrutiny on big-tech but many large investigations have been delayed since then. Large investigations such as the acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp by Facebook, YouTube and Google. Therefore, this introduces the question; should we really be over-regulating Big-tech? How can we create our financial dependencies elsewhere?
