March 2019

The gatekeeper and competition issues caused by app stores aren’t going away. At the same time, solutions to them should seek to maintain the convenience, security, and privacy benefits of software that is at least somewhat screened, since we’ve learned from experience that allowing any app, from anywhere, to have unfettered access to a user’s computer or other device is not good, either. No one wants smartphones to become like the virus and “toolbar”-infested Windows 98 family computers of the past.

As privacy scandals mount at firms such as Facebook, Presidential candidate Sen Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) is positioning her data tax as a way to make technology companies think twice about how they share and profit from users’ data. But implementing such an idea might be difficult, experts noted. Taxing data means you have to know what such information is worth, for instance. Former Facebook employee Antonio García Martínez says data is often compared to oil, but that's a poor analogy because unlike oil that has a clear price, the ultimate value of data is unknown.

Some of the country’s most influential state attorneys general are signaling they’re willing to take action against Facebook, Google and other tech giants, warning that the companies have grown too big and powerful -- and that Washington has been too slow to respond. Some state officials feel that Washington bears some of the blame for the tech industry’s string of scandals in the first place.