Tech Regulation - Thematic Intelligence
Summary
Technology is embedded in many aspects of our daily lives and can catalyze growth in an era of economic uncertainty. Digital transformation can help enterprises and consumers tackle some of the challenges they currently face, from pandemics to geopolitical conflicts to the climate emergency. However, the pace of innovation in areas like artificial intelligence (AI), blockchain, and digital health creates unprecedented risks to society. As digitalization accelerates, regulatory activity will increase, and scrutiny of the tech industry will intensify. Making regulation fit for the digital economy without hampering innovation is a thorny task that regulators must grasp.
Key Highlights
- Regulators will come after tech companies in 12 regulatory arenas: data security, data privacy, antitrust, tax avoidance, misinformation, online harm, AI ethics, copyright, net neutrality, US-China tech sanctions, ESG, and obstruction of justice.
- Data privacy, antitrust, AI, and online harm will be the main targets of regulators’ investigations in the near term, as these are the most critical areas to ensure a safe and efficient digital economy. Brussels is taking the lead in promoting new regulation-including on AI-with a string of new laws targeting Big Tech’s business model. In Washington, despite President Biden’s resolve to step up tech regulation, a divided Congress makes a change in the legal landscape unlikely. For its part, the Chinese government must strike a delicate balance: maintaining regulatory oversight of the tech sector while innovating fast in the technologies most under pressure from the US.
- This report looks at the impact of 12 regulatory arenas on Big Tech: data security, data privacy, antitrust, tax avoidance, misinformation, online harm, AI ethics, copyright, net neutrality US-China tech sanctions, ESG, and obstruction of justice.
- Data privacy, antitrust, AI ethics, and online harm will be the four main target areas of regulators’ investigations. The report includes detailed analysis of each of these four areas, including details of recent and upcoming regulation.
- This report also includes a ranking of Big Tech companies based on their overall exposure to regulatory risk.
- As the digital landscape continues to evolve, the importance of regulating tech has become apparent to governments globally. Following the establishment of the GDPR by the EU, many countries have followed suit, creating similar legislative frameworks to regulate the handling of data online. In addition to data protection, governments have been developing laws to govern antitrust, misinformation, and online harm.
- This report provides an invaluable overview of this important and highly disruptive theme.
- Executive Summary
- Players
- Data security
- Data privacy
- Antitrust
- Tax avoidance
- Misinformation
- Online harm
- AI ethics
- Copyright
- Net neutrality
- US-China tech sanctions
- Environmental, social and governance (ESG)
- Obstruction of justice
- Thematic Briefing
- Four regulatory arenas will receive the greatest scrutiny
- Data privacy
- Regulation is spurring important changes in the tech sector
- GDPR in numbers
- The lack of a federal data privacy law in the US will raise costs for businesses
- Geopolitics looms large in the data privacy landscape
- Antitrust
- Adapting traditional antitrust rules to the digital economy is daunting
- The DMA will pose the biggest threat to digital monopolies
- Extensive reform of competition law is expected in the UK
- US steps up regulation under the Biden administration
- Online harm and misinformation
- Governments are increasingly concerned about online content
- Policies to curb hate speech risk limiting free speech and are inconsistently enforced
- The DSA sets clear rules on how to keep users safe
- UK legislation has faced strong criticism
- AI ethics
- Europe
- The UK
- Asia-Pacific
- The US
- Self-regulation
- Trends
- Regulatory trends
- Technology trends
- Macroeconomic trends
- Regulatory Acts by Country
- Regulatory timeline
- Signals
- Company filings trends
- News trends
- Social media trends
- Companies
- Sector Scorecards
- Social media sector scorecard
- Who’s who
- Thematic screen
- Valuation screen
- Risk screen
- Advertising sector scorecard
- Who’s who
- Thematic screen
- Valuation screen
- Risk screen
- Glossary
- Further Reading
- GlobalData reports
- Our Thematic Research Methodology
- About GlobalData
- Contact Us
- List of Tables
- Table 1: Regulatory trends
- Table 2: Technology trends
- Table 3: Macroeconomic trends
- Table 4: Regulatory Acts by Country
- Table 5: Companies
- Table 6: Glossary
- Table 7: GlobalData reports
- List of Figures
- Figure 1: What’s the impact of regulation on Big Tech?
- Figure 2: Regulators will come after Big Tech in 12 regulatory arenas
- Figure 3: 137 out of 194 countries had put in place legislation to secure data protection and privacy
- Figure 4: Apple’s Search Ads business has joined the Meta-Google advertising duopoly
- Figure 5: After a slow start, regulators started to speed up their investigations from 2020
- Figure 6: 32 US states have passed or introduced data privacy legislation
- Figure 7: Data localization and data transfer obligations are key measures in China, India, and Russia
- Figure 8: The biggest antitrust fines in the tech sector, 2013-2022
- Figure 9: Who is subject to the DMA?
- Figure 10: What are the dos and don’ts for gatekeepers?
- Figure 11: DMA application timeline
- Figure 12: How the CMA’s new pro-competition regime would work
- Figure 13: The main investigations and lawsuits opened in the US, 2022-2023
- Figure 14: Measures to counter online hate speech, 2020
- Figure 15: Which providers are covered?
- Figure 16: Who are the very large platforms?
- Figure 17: The obligations are tailored to the different platforms in the online ecosystem
- Figure 18: The bill’s passage in parliament
- Figure 19: The key aims of the AI act
- Figure 20: EU AI Act risk levels
- Figure 21: The UK’s five guiding principles for AI development and implementation
- Figure 22: Japanese principles are based on this AI philosophy:
- Figure 23: US AI development principles
- Figure 24: The story of tech regulation
- Figure 25: Regulation is a top concern in the TMT sector, based on GlobalData company filings analytics
- Figure 26: Big Tech has been on the regulators’ radar over the past five years
- Figure 27: AI and IoT are the technologies with the most mentions in social media posts related to regulation
- Figure 28: Social media posts related to regulation of the tech sector increased by 336% between 2019 and 2022
- Figure 29: Who does what in the social media space?
- Figure 30: Thematic screen - Social media sector scorecard
- Figure 31: Valuation screen - Social media sector scorecard
- Figure 32: Risk screen - Social media sector scorecard
- Figure 33: Who does what in the advertising space?
- Figure 34: Thematic screen - Advertising sector scorecard
- Figure 35: Valuation screen - Advertising sector scorecard
- Figure 36: Risk screen - Advertising sector scorecard
- Figure 37: Our five-step approach for generating a sector scorecard
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