Daily Archives: July 14, 2019

Fines don’t work. To control tech companies we have to hit them where it really hurts

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Today’s Observer comment piece

If you want a measure of the problem society will have in controlling the tech giants, then ponder this: as it has become clear that the US Federal Trade Commission is about to impose a fine of $5bn (£4bn) on Facebook for violating a decree governing privacy breaches, the company’s share price went up!

This is a landmark moment. It’s the biggest ever fine imposed by the FTC, the body set up to police American capitalism. And $5bn is a lot of money in anybody’s language. Anybody’s but Facebook’s. It represents just a month of revenues and the stock market knew it. Facebook’s capitalisation went up $6bn with the news. This was a fine that actually increased Mark Zuckerberg’s personal wealth…

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Data can be as toxic as fossil fuel reserves

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This morning’s Observer column:

”Data is the new oil” is a tired metaphor designed to capture the fact that, just as the old economy ran on oil, so the new digital economy runs on data. Just as plentiful reserves of underground oil were good for oil companies, so the possession of masses of data would likewise be a great asset for tech companies lucky enough to have it. And whether or not they count it explicitly as an asset on their balance sheets, in practice it gives them a powerful bulwark against competitors and startups. It’s no longer enough for a couple of grad students to come up with a better search algorithm than Google’s, for example; they would also have to build a global network of massive server farms – and have acquired exabytes of data. So possession of large quantities of data greatly heightens the barrier to entry for competitors and thereby strengthens incumbents. The more data you have, the better.

The ICO’s recent fines, however, cast a shadow on this cosy scene. Possessing oodles of data is only an unalloyed good if you can protect it from thieves, hackers and other criminals. If you can’t, then that precious asset can suddenly turn toxic – just like fossil fuel reserves….

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