The challenges for regulation are two-fold, in my opinion:<p>1. It just doesn't work. Legal and regulatory solutions are too slow and poorly designed to be effective, see for example the EU browser consent decree applied to Internet Explorer. IE didn't fail because Microsoft was forced to offer a choice of browser; it stumbled because of other nimbler competitors (particularly Chrome) that were able to innovate despite Microsoft's historical success. Similarly, Windows' monopoly of the 2000s was nothing like as entrenched as a business like oil: the dominant player is always at risk from technological shifts (e.g. browser-based apps) that render old advantages (Win32) less profound.<p>2. The marketplace is global. Heavy regulation of US or EU companies is a competitive disadvantage when Chinese companies operate in a very different dynamic. The US could hypothetically force the dismantling of Facebook into its constituent products or the EU could add stricter rules on how it could monetize its services, but that just plays to the advantages of Tiktok and other companies that they have even less control over. It's unclear that this is in the interests of America or Europe.<p>[Disclosure: I work for Google, but it's Sunday and I don't speak for them; I'm just another muggle posting on the internet.]
>>> Today it might have 100x that. So, how many compliance people will Google have in five years?<p>Compliance goes hand in glove with regulatory reporting. Reporting to regulators <i>should</i> be a marginal cost thing - if the data internally is same, well managed and fully auditable in an automated fashion.<p>Doing this in finance is something the new challenger banks (ie monzo built about five years ago by ten coders and now has a million UK accounts) - this is something they can have one compliance person because all their systems are new and written with compliance in mind.<p>Doing this for most major banks is next to impossible. It would rewriting everything (#)<p>(#) Actuallly i would say this is a good strategic plan for most major banks. Might not be able to persuade the board but still.
I've seen this piece a few times, and it's broadly good, but I think it glosses over the fact that just because politicians want regulation or try to pass regulation does not mean it actually happens.<p>As a good example, we're now at the 10th anniversary of the original Digital Economy Act in the UK, the legislation that was going to disconnect persistent pirates from the internet and send out warning letters. This legislation passed. There was much writing at the time about how this was the end of the open internet, and from politicians about how this was the end of the wild west internet.<p>And yet, ten years later, not a single action has ever been undertaken under those provisions. No letters were sent. No disconnections ever happened. And that's because politicians ignored the complexity, declared something must be done and passed law that didn't actually parse into any real world actions. Primarily it was just completely barmy costs wise for rights owners to send letters, so they didn't and the regulator just quietly forgot about it after several consultations.<p>Much of this regulation feels very similar. Laws may be passed, but the vast majority of them will never result in any changes because frankly the quality of lawmaking in most jurisdictions is extremely poor. One or two bits certainly will, but most of it will fail badly.<p>Evans sets out the UK's Online Harms act as an example, but the Online Harms regulation is doomed for one simple reason - everyone and their dog in politics and lobbying keeps trying to project their problems on to it as something that will be solved. It's suddenly got to do a million things, while not having any resource to do so. It will inevitably collapse under it's own weight because nobody involved is brave enough to say it's scope is already too big to work.
Right now there are three huge risks in regulating tech:<p>1. Slowing innovation
2. Creating monopolies
3. Crippling entire segments of the tech industry<p>The last chart is the most important: the cost of compliance affects small businesses, including startups much more than large companies.
Can I veer horribly into my favourite tangent - I love the presentation style, the look-and-feel. It's a blog version of what he did at A18Z - a sort of sophisticated corporate but with the look of something that could be knocked up from Markdown.<p>I could steal the CSS, but that's is only 20% of the battle - getting graphs that match the snazz, getting everything just right, but with this off handed vibe.<p>As I get older this stuff matters.
I don't understand the Tech Regulation chart [0]. What does the y-axis represent?<p>[0] <a href="https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/50363cf324ac8e905e7df861/1595522011184-I19EHYNRIQ555ZPMZH5V/ke17ZwdGBToddI8pDm48kNvT88LknE-K9M4pGNO0Iqd7gQa3H78H3Y0txjaiv_0fDoOvxcdMmMKkDsyUqMSsMWxHk725yiiHCCLfrh8O1z5QPOohDIaIeljMHgDF5CVlOqpeNLcJ80NK65_fV7S1UbeDbaZv1s3QfpIA4TYnL5Qao8BosUKjCVjCf8TKewJIH3bqxw7fF48mhrq5Ulr0Hg/2020+Shoulders+of+Giants+1.1.088.png?format=2500w" rel="nofollow">https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/50363cf324ac8e...</a>
> why your fellow-citizens didn’t vote the right way.<p>I'm a little concerned by the implication that regulating tech should focus on making sure that people vote "the right way".
I don’t think it can be regulated. I believe it will develop into a black market (dark web). Most regulations in the American industry are usually for just profit or are crippling. Its hard to imagine internet regulation going well.