What to Watch: Regulation of Big TechIs 2019 the year that Facebook, Google and Amazon face the regulatory music?

[Collection]Big Tech is poised to continue playing defense this year in the face of mounting public and political scrutiny over the generally unchecked collection and use of user data. Just watching a few minutes of the many, many government hearings in the U.S. and Europe that executives from the likes of Facebook, Google and Twitter participated in over the last 18 months or so (Amazon has been spared hearings for a few years but a new probe is likely to change that), it’s obvious that emotions around use of people’s data — everything from shopping habits to near constant location tracking — are running high. In Europe, government regulators are much more active in trying to keep the likes of Facebook, Google and Amazon from overwhelming its single-market economy by leveraging their utter dominance over social media, searchable content and online commerce to edge out any possibility of competition. And the region, which leans toward much stricter antitrust rules, is already handing out fines for violations of its new General Data Protection Regulation law and seems to be working more directly to stymie the seemingly unstoppable growth of these major tech-driven companies. The focus on Facebook seems likely to carry on as

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