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100 Foreign Aff. 98 (2021)
How to Save Democracy from Technology: Ending Big Tech's Information Monopoly

handle is hein.journals/fora100 and id is 100 raw text is: How to Save Democracy From Technology Ending Big Tech's Information Monopoly Francis Fukuyama, Barak Richman, and Ashish Goel Among the many transformations taking place in the U.S. econ- omy, none is more salient than the growth of gigantic Internet platforms. Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, and Twitter, already powerful before the coveD-19 pandemic, have become even more so during it, as so much of everyday life moves online. As con- venient as their technology is, the emergence of such dominant corpo- rations should ring alarm bells-not just because they hold so much economic power but also because they wield so much control over po- litical communication. These behemoths now dominate the dissemina- tion of information and the coordination of political mobilization. That poses unique threats to a well-functioning democracy. While the EU has sought to enforce antitrust laws against these platforms, the United States has been much more tepid in its response. But that is beginning to change. Over the past two years, the Federal Trade Commission and a coalition of state attorneys general have ini- tiated investigations into potential abuses of these platforms' monop- oly power, and in October, the Justice Department filed an antitrust suit against Google. Big Tech's critics now include both Democrats FRANCIS FUKUYAMA is a Senior Fellow at Stanford University's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. BARAK RICHMAN is Katharine T. Bartlett Professor of Law and Professor of Business Administration at Duke University School of Law. ASHISH GOEL is Professor of Management Science and Engineering at Stanford University. They are members of the Working Group on Platform Scale for Stanford University's Program on Democracy and the Internet. 98 FOREIGN AFFAIRS

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