We’ll take on social media giants, says UK opposition party
Digital tech firms are too big and Britain’s opposition Labour Party would create a dedicated technology regulator to prevent market abuse and look at breaking up monopolies like Facebook, according to the party’s deputy leader.
The digital revolution has spawned a handful of US-based technology companies since the 1990s that now have a combined financial and cultural power greater than most sovereign states.
Tom Watson’s plans include creating a regulator, creating a Digital Bill of Rights and giving social media firms a legal duty of care to protect users. “The scale of the largest companies is rightly the subject of scrutiny. We should take seriously the calls to break them up if it is in the public interest,” Watson said.
Facebook in particular has come under scrutiny over its use of data. Concerns about its ability to safeguard user data have sparked a government lawsuit in the US, while it has been criticized by law- makers around the world. Shares have been hit by investor concern about legal and regulatory efforts over its data use polices.
Labour did not set out in detail how a British regulator might attempt to break up some of the most powerful companies in the world, almost all of which are based outside the UK. In a interview with BBC radio, Watson cited Facebook’s purchase of Instagram an example of a merger that concentrated user data in a dangerous way.