While it’s no secret to anyone watching the stratospheric growth of Facebook and Google over the past decade, the recent congressional report on antitrust and the technology sector made it clear: We have a problem, and its name is Big Tech.
The groundbreaking report, authored by House Judiciary Committee staff, details the abuses that occur when a handful of giant firms dominate almost every aspect of the online marketplace. “To put it simply,” the report reads, “companies that once were scrappy, underdog startups that challenged the status quo have become the kinds of monopolies we last saw in the era of oil barons and railroad tycoons.”
Nowhere is this more evident than in the control that the two companies exert over online advertising. And the consequences have been devastating — not only to the news industry, which has seen its sources of revenue evaporate as advertisers have abandoned traditional placements in print, radio and television, but also to the sort of civil discourse that is the lifeblood of a functioning democracy....
Read the entire Op-Ed at the Seattle Times
