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Abstract:
Congressional and academic critics of large technology firms — e.g. Alphabet (Google) and Meta (Facebook) — have argued that the use of behavioral data by these firms objectionably concentrates market power. However, the precise nature of this objection has struck many antitrust experts as suspiciously obscure. Some tools of moral and political philosophy can, I argue, quell such suspicions. In this talk, I introduce and defend a view about the moral underpinnings of recent Antitrust concerns related to behavioral data collection and concentrated market power. Roughly, the ability of firms to exclude other entities from accessing and using their raw, anonymized behavioral data sets – and thereby raise barriers of entry to new sectors – constitutes a pro tanto objectionable form of exploitation. It is ‘us’ as a societal whole rather than any single, particular individual, however, who is being exploited. To alleviate this form of societal exploitation, we must liberate access to behavioral data.
Paper related to the talk: “Do We Own Our Data? The Finders-Keepers Ethics of the Cyber Commons”
For further reading:
https://www.yalelawjournal.org/note/amazons-antitrust-paradox
https://harvardlawreview.org/print/vol-133/the-end-of-antitrust-history-revisited/
https://www.yalelawjournal.org/feature/a-relational-theory-of-data-governance