ECONOMY
ANALYSIS
DIGITAL REGULATION AND ECONOMY
Currently, most digital platforms enjoy unregulated freedom of expression and economic benefits with very less social responsibility, but how long will this trend last?
Digital regulators and the digital economy MOUMITA BASU
About a decade earlier, when digital platforms started gaining popularity, both regulators and the public took it for granted that its promise to remove bottlenecks and intermediaries is going to come with added benefits like new economic opportunities to the population, especially the ones who have been shut With the rise down by the already existing of social media incumbents. Currently, only a taking place few companies are there that around the control the massive portions same time, it of the world’s economic brought about activity and investment capital. With the rise of social a new era of media taking place around journalism the same time, it brought and proabout a new era of journalism democracy and pro-democracy movemove-ments ments around the globe. around the Currently, we see the same globe platforms being used to spread conspiracy theories, fake news and hate speech to undermine democracies and tragedies that have taken place, which, in turn, sows distrust in fundamental government institutions. Seeing the panic and the level of distrust increasing among the public, a sense of urgency, bordering on panic has set in among the national and global regulators. Very quickly, we have
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changed our decisions to keep these digital platforms unregulated to demanding that digital regulators control these unchecked platforms from abusing their unlimited power by either breaking them down into smaller groups or by strictly regulating their content and services provided by these digital platforms. Recently, the European Parliament passed a law saying that digital platforms have to take down ‘terrorist content’ within an hour of being notified. Similarly, the US has also called for breaking up digital platforms into separate retail and platform-hosting businesses. But there will always be others who will continue to push the status quo. Their argument is that whatever harm is being done on the digital platforms are outweighed by the benefits they offer. They believe that imposing strict governmental regulations on digital platforms will deprive us of the possible future benefits these platforms promise. A large amount of the world’s commerce and communications take place on these digital platforms. Therefore, according to them, a radical change in the already existing regulatory framework will only result in more disruption and harm compared to all the negative aspects identified by the regulators. Additionally, they have also argued that the cost of regulation is going to cement the position of already existing market power and won’t let anyone new enter that space. They maintain that the efforts of blocking fake news and hate speech will hamper
