Regulate and stem the crisis of confidence

THIS WEEK'S TOPIC: Should Facebook (and other Big Tech giants) be split up? How (if at all) should they be regulated?

Mike Davie CEO Quadrant

We need to be careful when suggesting new regulations, especially for social media platforms. We need to ensure any regulations that we put in place protect the consumer and doesn't just create walls that reduce competition. Smart regulations should ensure that Facebook users' data are not used for nefarious purposes yet should allow firms to be able to still use that data to do good, innovate and create new products and services.

Being a big company is not a bad thing and we should avoid calling for the breakup of Facebook because we are concerned about its monopoly power. I remember in the early 2000s there was a push to break up Microsoft along product lines due to claims that it was abusing its monopoly power with Internet Explorer. These efforts failed (although some regulations were put in place) and now the only reason people use Internet Explorer is to download Google Chrome or Moz…