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Working hypothesis
More Insight online
Your guide to a rapidly changing world www.newscientist.com/insight
Billions from billions
and nothing short of breaking them up will work,” she says. That may be starting to change. Last week, Facebook warned investors that it expected to be fined as much as $5 billion by the US Federal Trade Commission, which is currently investigating the firm as a result of the Cambridge Analytica data scandal. Diane Coyle at the University of Cambridge, who co-authored an independent review of digital competition for the UK
€8.2bn
Total amount Google has been fined under EU competition law
government, says regulators could use existing powers more. For example, in the UK, Facebook and YouTube could be treated as publishers and held responsible for their content. “They’d have to do a lot to comply,” says Coyle. The report also argues for new regulations, like making it easier for new businesses to use established platforms so that they aren’t shut out of a market, allowing users to transfer data from one platform to another.
Tech companies like Amazon, Facebook and Google’s parent company Alphabet are among the most successful on the planet – in part because they offer services used by a significant fraction of humanity Number of users (billions) Facebook WhatsApp Facebook Messenger Instagram
1.5 1.3
$56bn
1
Alphabet YouTube
1.8
Gmail
Amazon
2018 revenue 2.3
1.5
0.3
SOURCE: FACEBOOK; ALPHABET; AMAZON
$137bn $233bn
In fairness, Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Twitter are part of an initiative called the Data Transfer Project, which works towards this aim. But if we want services like search or social networks to become more like email – with different products, such as Gmail or Outlook, all using the same underlying protocols – then there is a long way to go. Coyle also says regulators need to think differently about acquisitions. Treating Instagram as just a photo-sharing platform, and not a Facebook competitor, was naive, she says. “Regulation is inevitable,” says Moore. “But we have to be careful how we do it.” He thinks we need a clear sense of the kind of relationship society should have with big tech before we jump in. Choosing the kind of services we want the likes of Amazon, Facebook and Google to provide will determine how we shape the behaviour of the companies through regulation. For example, if we think – as Warren does – that these tech companies should be more like utilities, then a search engine provider might become as highly regulated as water or electricity firms. Or if we care most about privacy and what happens to our data, then we need specific regulations to enforce transparency or interoperability. Once we ask these questions, we may find ourselves re-examining the economic model behind these firms. Some say the billions made by Facebook and Google are a result of “surveillance capitalism”, in which services are provided in exchange for personal data. For Moore, dealing with this economic model is the bigger problem. “If you don’t, then you’re going to get other companies just as dominant in future,” he says. ❚
▲ Slow walkers The UK’s Ordnance Survey is to recalculate how long walking routes take. Its Victorian-era formula currently generates times that are unrealistically fast for many hikers. ▲ Patient physicists The radioactive decay of xenon-124 has been observed. With a half-life of a trillion times the age of the universe, it makes watching paint dry an extreme sport. ▲ Donald Trump In other rare news, the US president has come out in favour of science. He declared “vaccinations are so important” in response to US measles outbreaks. ▼ Russian whale A whale wearing a harness marked “Equipment of St Petersburg” may have been trained by the Russian navy. Or perhaps it just liked visiting cathedrals? ▼ Asteroid Ryugu Japan confirmed it had blasted a hole in asteroid Ryugu, going a small way to avenging the dinosaurs.
JAXA
to disentangle these apps from Facebook’s core business, which is collecting as much data on people as possible. The company even seems to be trying to bolster its defences against a break-up: CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently announced it would be merging the code and data of Instagram and WhatsApp more tightly with the core Facebook app. Even if you could see a way to do it, breaking up a large company is no quick fix. For regulators, it is a last-ditch option, more a threat than a viable response. The European Commission, driven by Vestager, has been tougher than most on big tech. But, legally, to consider such a farreaching course of action would require it to demonstrate that a break-up is the only way to reign in a company’s bad conduct, which wouldn’t be straightforward. For these reasons, the better option may be to double down on regulation. Caffarra says that calls to break up big tech are more common in the US, where tech firms have been left to do more or less what they want since the Microsoft case 20 years ago. “There is a sense of frustration in many quarters. Nothing is being done
Sorting the week's supernovae from the absolute zeros
4 May 2019 | New Scientist | 19
More Insight online
Your guide to a rapidly changing world www.newscientist.com/insight
Billions from billions
and nothing short of breaking them up will work,” she says. That may be starting to change. Last week, Facebook warned investors that it expected to be fined as much as $5 billion by the US Federal Trade Commission, which is currently investigating the firm as a result of the Cambridge Analytica data scandal. Diane Coyle at the University of Cambridge, who co-authored an independent review of digital competition for the UK
€8.2bn
Total amount Google has been fined under EU competition law
government, says regulators could use existing powers more. For example, in the UK, Facebook and YouTube could be treated as publishers and held responsible for their content. “They’d have to do a lot to comply,” says Coyle. The report also argues for new regulations, like making it easier for new businesses to use established platforms so that they aren’t shut out of a market, allowing users to transfer data from one platform to another.
Tech companies like Amazon, Facebook and Google’s parent company Alphabet are among the most successful on the planet – in part because they offer services used by a significant fraction of humanity Number of users (billions) Facebook WhatsApp Facebook Messenger Instagram
1.5 1.3
$56bn
1
Alphabet YouTube
1.8
Gmail
Amazon
2018 revenue 2.3
1.5
0.3
SOURCE: FACEBOOK; ALPHABET; AMAZON
$137bn $233bn
In fairness, Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Twitter are part of an initiative called the Data Transfer Project, which works towards this aim. But if we want services like search or social networks to become more like email – with different products, such as Gmail or Outlook, all using the same underlying protocols – then there is a long way to go. Coyle also says regulators need to think differently about acquisitions. Treating Instagram as just a photo-sharing platform, and not a Facebook competitor, was naive, she says. “Regulation is inevitable,” says Moore. “But we have to be careful how we do it.” He thinks we need a clear sense of the kind of relationship society should have with big tech before we jump in. Choosing the kind of services we want the likes of Amazon, Facebook and Google to provide will determine how we shape the behaviour of the companies through regulation. For example, if we think – as Warren does – that these tech companies should be more like utilities, then a search engine provider might become as highly regulated as water or electricity firms. Or if we care most about privacy and what happens to our data, then we need specific regulations to enforce transparency or interoperability. Once we ask these questions, we may find ourselves re-examining the economic model behind these firms. Some say the billions made by Facebook and Google are a result of “surveillance capitalism”, in which services are provided in exchange for personal data. For Moore, dealing with this economic model is the bigger problem. “If you don’t, then you’re going to get other companies just as dominant in future,” he says. ❚
▲ Slow walkers The UK’s Ordnance Survey is to recalculate how long walking routes take. Its Victorian-era formula currently generates times that are unrealistically fast for many hikers. ▲ Patient physicists The radioactive decay of xenon-124 has been observed. With a half-life of a trillion times the age of the universe, it makes watching paint dry an extreme sport. ▲ Donald Trump In other rare news, the US president has come out in favour of science. He declared “vaccinations are so important” in response to US measles outbreaks. ▼ Russian whale A whale wearing a harness marked “Equipment of St Petersburg” may have been trained by the Russian navy. Or perhaps it just liked visiting cathedrals? ▼ Asteroid Ryugu Japan confirmed it had blasted a hole in asteroid Ryugu, going a small way to avenging the dinosaurs.
JAXA
to disentangle these apps from Facebook’s core business, which is collecting as much data on people as possible. The company even seems to be trying to bolster its defences against a break-up: CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently announced it would be merging the code and data of Instagram and WhatsApp more tightly with the core Facebook app. Even if you could see a way to do it, breaking up a large company is no quick fix. For regulators, it is a last-ditch option, more a threat than a viable response. The European Commission, driven by Vestager, has been tougher than most on big tech. But, legally, to consider such a farreaching course of action would require it to demonstrate that a break-up is the only way to reign in a company’s bad conduct, which wouldn’t be straightforward. For these reasons, the better option may be to double down on regulation. Caffarra says that calls to break up big tech are more common in the US, where tech firms have been left to do more or less what they want since the Microsoft case 20 years ago. “There is a sense of frustration in many quarters. Nothing is being done
Sorting the week's supernovae from the absolute zeros
4 May 2019 | New Scientist | 19