The Absence of Consumer Power: Facebook and Google Anti-Trust Investigations

Ever since the news broke in 2018 about the Cambridge Analytical Scandal, in which Facebook allowed the personal data of millions of users to be shared (without their consent) with the Cambridge Analytica firm, the world has been forced to question just how safe our personal data is online. This resulted in a paradigm shift in how we, as online media consumers, consider the trust we have in companies maintaining the security of our online identities.

Although that scandal has come and gone, the online media giants are facing more backlash and investigations over their advertising process. Major companies such as Facebook, Amazon, and Google have recently been hit with federal anti-trust investigations, with the intention of looking into the process behind their advertising dominance, as well as their data security.

The idea is that these major companies have such large control over advertisement publishing that they force advertisers into tough positions where they are unable to choose other platforms. The federal government fears that these companies can use this power to ruin any semblance of competition between online advertisers. This would mean the most prominent advertisers would be those with the most money to spend, and the highest willingness to pay companies like Facebook and Google the boatloads of money they charge to advertise over their competitors. This can have a sort of trickle down effect to the everyday consumer, as Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton puts it, “If advertising costs are higher, advertisers pay more, and ultimately that’s passed on to consumers.” 

From what I gathered; these anti-trust investigations serve as a model of the larger issues that stem from our interactions with these mega companies as consumers. The main issue simply being control. Companies like Facebook, Amazon, and Google have so much of it while we have so little as consumers. What’s so frustrating about this to me is the lack of awareness we have to the extent of these companies’ control. They can do and get away with so much, and we have very little accessible tools to know that it’s even going on. Plus, even if we could be fully aware, they have such a large online traffic flow that I don’t think anything extreme would come out of it.

These antitrust investigations could definitely change the landscape of online security and advertising, but it would probably be years down the road, and it’s difficult to estimate just how noticeable those changes would be. All in all, as a user of these brands, I just don’t see how these investigations will leave an impact where people will stop putting their trust in these companies to treat them fairly. The amount of dominance they have online leaves the average day consumer in a deep hole of ignorance.

https://www.cnn.com/2019/09/06/tech/facebook-antitrust-investigation/index.html

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/3/23/17151916/facebook-cambridge-analytica-trump-diagram

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/google-antitrust-probe-48-u-s-states-launch-antitrust-investigation-of-google-dominance-in-search-ads-and-data/