{"id":48135,"date":"2019-12-19T07:12:50","date_gmt":"2019-12-19T06:12:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/?p=48135"},"modified":"2019-12-19T07:12:59","modified_gmt":"2019-12-19T06:12:59","slug":"uk-to-establish-new-watchdog-to-regulate-tech-giants-after-brexit-amid-calls-to-curb-their-power","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/2019\/12\/uk-to-establish-new-watchdog-to-regulate-tech-giants-after-brexit-amid-calls-to-curb-their-power\/","title":{"rendered":"UK to establish new watchdog to regulate tech giants after Brexit, amid calls to curb their power"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The UK will create a new regulator next year, tasked specifically with monitoring and regulating large tech companies following the UK\u2019s withdrawal from the European Union, the Financial Times<\/em> reported Wednesday.<\/a> The watchdog will wield new powers to enforce a code of conduct for tech giants. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The move was recommended in a review of large tech sector companies, led by former US president Barack Obama\u2019s chief economic adviser, Jason Furman. It also comes as governments throughout Europe and the rest of the world are scrutinizing tech giants and implementing new efforts to curb their power, promote competition, and protect consumers.\u00a0

Antitrust experts say the move is necessary for Britain post-Brexit, since the European Commission has been dealing with its largest antitrust cases.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The UK\u2019s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) also said in an interim report published Wednesday that the UK should implement stricter rules for tech giants when it comes to user control of personal data and the dominance of a handful of companies over the digital advertising market. Google accounts for about 90 percent of search advertising sales in the UK, while Facebook earns about half of display advertising revenue. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe are concerned that they are both now so large and have such extensive access to data that potential rivals can no longer compete on equal terms,\u201d the CMA said in the report<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWeak competition in digital advertising can increase the prices of goods and services across the economy and undermine the ability of newspapers and others to produce valuable content, to the detriment of broader society.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They also warned<\/a> that while “big is not necessarily bad” the anti-competitive atmosphere could hold back “the next great new idea from a potential rival.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They noted that Google has taken actions to maintain its control of the market, including paying \u00a31 billion last year to ensure its role as the default search engine on mobile devices. Most of that payment went to Apple, another tech giant.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The report also criticized tech companies\u2019 handling of user data, saying the release of \u201cconsiderable amounts of personal data\u201d is presented as a take-it-or-leave-it condition for using a service like Facebook. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) has been meeting with competition lawyers and experts in recent months to determine the extent of the new agency\u2019s powers and responsibilities. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Philip Marsden, a member of the Furman review, said the new agency should be empowered to issue fines that exceed the cap on those from the CMA.\u00a0

Photo by Outreach Pete [CC BY 2.0 (https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/2.0)]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The UK will create a new regulator next year, tasked specifically with monitoring and regulating large tech companies following the UK\u2019s withdrawal from the European Union, the Financial Times reported Wednesday. The watchdog will wield new powers to enforce a code of conduct for tech giants.  The move was recommended in a review of large<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":77,"featured_media":48140,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"subtitle":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[113],"tags":[10179,1604,10214],"class_list":["post-48135","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-finance","tag-antitrust","tag-competition","tag-user-data"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48135","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/77"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48135"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48135\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/48140"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48135"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48135"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48135"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}