Big Text Should Be Broken Up

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We have no idea how much value is going out of the window. We think they're free, we're actually paying with our data. Big te has not shown itself to be a good steward of the digital commons. Breaking up firms isn't a recipe for degrading products and services. It's actually a recipe for innovation.

With so much data and power centralised in the hands of a few West Coast companies, the tech giants have become a serious threat to our basic freedoms and must be broken up. That’s the argument that was made at this major Intelligence Squared debate by the FT’s global business columnist Rana Foroohar and by businessman and former chairman of Channel 4 Luke Johnson. But others would argue that it’s all too easy to make the tech giants a scapegoat for the inevitable upheavals caused by the digital revolution. The real winners of this revolution are not the tech companies but us, the users. Who could now imagine living without the services of Amazon, Apple, Google, Facebook and Microsoft? That’s the case that was made in our debate by former head of Facebook’s European politics and government division Elizabeth Linder and competition law expert Pinar Akman. Who's right and who's wrong?

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