The growth of large online social media platforms on the internet has been accompanied by a corresponding rise in the concerns of centralisation and anti-competitive behaviour. After remaining relatively unscathed by competition regulators for over a decade of their existence, there is now an increasing focus on reigning in the influence and market power that is wielded by a small set of companies that fall in the bucket of “social media companies”. The rest of this piece will look into the societal concerns raised by such centralisation, the recent moves by regulators around the world to look into antitrust concerns, and an overview of the various solutions being debated around the world.
The concerns with such centralisation, and the almost tautological monopolistic practices it can lead to, can broadly be split into economic and societal harms. Economically speaking, traditional competition law has always focused on the idea that unfair practices by entities with greater-than-ordinary influence in the market can lead to consumer harm. This consumer harm (which has both monetary and quality of service components) is considered bad for the general health and innovation potential of a societies’ economy as a whole.