Once a darling, Big Tech is now a target
When Facebook announced on March 6 a new emphasis on user privacy, much of the public reaction was along the lines of “we’ll believe it when we see it.” And two days later, when Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren pledged that her priorities would include breaking up giant tech companies like Google and Facebook, responses were similarly skeptical.
The grains of salt are warranted. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has pledged to respond to public concerns about privacy before. Major antitrust actions to bust apart giant companies are rare.
Yet those recent announcements also symbolize a change that has occurred over the past year or so. Public concerns about online privacy are on the rise. Prominent researchers are wondering aloud if the rise of “Big Tech” is bad
Beware the states?Backlash started in 2018Lessons from EuropeFocus on the big or the small?