Person:

Verveer, Philip

The major digital platform companies present a large, complicated array of benefits and problems for the country and the world. The companies increasingly have the attention of both average citizens and senior-most public officials, as befits entities that have achieved great—perhaps even paramount—influence in political, social, and cultural domains. And, in recent times, the companies have become the objects of profound ambivalence, with serious proposals emanating from serious sources recommending material changes in their legal rights and obligations.

The services offered, and the business models sustaining those services, produce very important consequences—both good and bad—in both the long-term and the short-term. Political and jurisprudential realities suggest that in the United States comprehensive policy responses will be formulated and implemented only over an extended period. And that raises the question, what legal mechanisms are available to address issues that arise in the interim? Does availability of legal tools imply efficacy, or are the obstacles to the imposition of effective remedies—assuming remedies are required—so formidable as to compromise the undertaking?

Digital platforms that enable two-sided markets—Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Twitter, among others—are, to understate the case, the object of significant and growing critical attention. Their economic, social, political, and cultural power has become a source of disquiet. A concern that is only heightened by the certainty that some of the companies’ activities have been exploited by hostile intelligence and security services.