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In order to hold the big social media giants of Silicon Valley responsible for their actions, one increasingly popular approach is to find ways to take them to court. In theory, this should work. If these companies won’t change their practices and behaviors on their own, then a multi-million-dollar lawsuit should do the trick, right?
Wrong!! We’ve seen this story time and time again over the years. Even a million-dollar fine is a drop in the bucket, compared to the billions in dollars in revenue that they are making every quarter. Even worse, the likelihood of a case ever making its way to a jury trial is very low. Going in front of a jury is when the damages and penalties might really add up, so Big Tech has done everything possible to avoid this worst-case scenario.
Google vs. the world
Consider, for example, the recent legal shenanigans of Google. In 2023, the Justice Department filed an antitrust suit against Google, claiming that the company engaged in anti-market, monopolistic practices within its digital advertising business unit. The case was supposed to go to a jury trial, and from Google’s perspective, that brought with it a certain degree of risk. Put the right set of jurors together, and they might come up with an eye-popping multi-million dollar judgment.
So guess what happened? Google very quietly has been attempting to settle the whole matter out of court. Google calculated that total damages involved were less than $1 million, and paid an undisclosed sum to get the whole case settled out of court. In defense of its bold legal strategy, Google claimed that the case should be heard by a judge directly, and not by a jury. According to Google, the digital advertising case would be “too technical” for a jury to understand. And Google further claimed that the Justice Department manufactured a whole set of arguments at the last minute, just to make the case look more damaging than it really was.
Currently, the case is set for a hearing in a Virginia federal court. Depending on what happens there, Google may or may not have to go to a jury trial sometime in September. But don’t bet on it. The lawyers hired by Google are just too good.
Do fines and penalties really work?
And that’s what has me thinking that a strategy of fining and penalizing Big Tech companies won’t work. Even if Google somehow ends up paying out millions of dollars in this case, it’s still not going to be much, compared to what the company is making with digital ads.
So if the carrot doesn’t work, and the stick doesn’t work, then what does? That’s the big question we need to be asking ourselves. Maybe the answer is putting warning labels on social media and hoping for the best. That might sound crazy, but that is what the U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy recommends. As he sees it, social media users are in an “unfair fight” with Big Tech, and social media platforms now need warning labels similar to the types you see on cigarettes and alcohol.
One thing is certain: now is the time to think outside the box when it comes to solutions. We’ve passed the point where we could count on fines, penalties, and other damages to make social media companies change the way they do business.
