Tag: public utility

  • A Facelift for Facebook

    By Steven Hill, Project Syndicate, October 8, 2021

    The free market has never been a free-for-all, yet tech companies have long operated with few constraints on their business models. Perhaps the latest Facebook scandal will finally provide the impetus governments need to take effective action – beginning with the implementation of digital operating permits.

  • Europe’s Digital Fix Is Already Broken

    by Steven Hill, Project Syndicate, March 25, 2021

    After unveiling two new digital regulations to much fanfare last year, the European Commission already needs to go back to the drawing board. Big Tech’s latest scandals have made clear that the only workable governance model for the digital economy is one that treats the leading platforms as utilities.

  • How we can tame the wild west of Big Tech media?

    By Steven Hill, Mercury News, Jan 27, 2021

    Why do so many people, including both former President Donald Trump and new President Joe Biden, keep talking about getting rid of an obscure law called Section 230?

    The short answer is that Section 230, part of the Communications Decency Act of 1996, is the legal underpinning for one of the largest and most consequential experiments in American history.…

  • Should President Biden Revoke Section 230?

    by Steven Hill, American Compass, Jan 27, 2021

    The recent attack on the US Capitol reveals the danger of digital media platforms. Here’s what we must do to repair our new media infrastructure.

    The beautiful dream of an open and free internet, serving as a global agora of unlimited free speech to provide for more democratic participation, has crashed and burned one more time.…

  • Big Tech media and the EU’s weak reed of ‘competition’

    by Steven Hill, Social Europe, January 26, 2021

    The attack on the US Capitol revealed the dangers of Big Tech media platforms—but envisaged EU competition laws won’t fix them.

    The European Commission has earned a reputation as the world’s foremost regulator of Big Tech companies. Led by the commissioner responsible for ‘a Europe fit for the digital age’, Margrethe Vestager, its latest salvo was launched on December 15th, with proposals for a Digital Services Act (DSA) and a Digital Markets Act (DMA).…

  • How to deal with the social media monster

    by Steven Hill, Salon, Jan 16, 2021

    The beautiful dream of an open and free internet, serving as a global agora of unlimited free speech to provide for more popular participation in U.S. democracy, just crashed and burned one more time. 

    The gripping images of a mob ransacking the U.S.…

  • How to fix EU’s weak Digital Services and Markets Acts

    By Steven Hill, EU Observer, Jan 15, 2021

    The attack on the US Capitol was incited and planned over Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and other digital media platforms, and it is a warning to Europe.

    Unfortunately, the recently proposed policies by EU Commission vice president Margrethe Vestager and the European Commission, called the Digital Services Act (DSA) and Digital Markets Act (DMA), are poorly equipped to deal with the extreme toxicities of the digital media platform business model.…

  • Can Facebook be Used to Steal an Election?

    By Steven Hill, Counterpunch, October 30, 2020

    What a year. The US has faced three unprecedented crises – the COVID pandemic, nationwide racial unrest, and now a bitterly contested presidential election. And there in the middle of all three is the Dark Trinity: Facebook, YouTube and Twitter.

    With nearly 3 billion users, Facebook is by far the largest publisher in the world of news and information.…