Safeguarding Personal Data Should Be Key To Competition Reform

US president Joe Biden, in his recent 2023 State of the Union address, made two statements that have not been repeated with enough force by Canadian policymakers. First, president Biden vowed to bolster antitrust laws in order to bring the power of Big Tech under control – to prevent these giants from beneffiting from an “unfair advantage” in our increasingly digital economies.

Next, he promised to carry through legislation to place “stricter limits on the personal data” that big tech “collect[s] on all of us.”

Both these measures are long overdue — and not just in the United States. Consumers’ personal data is quickly becoming the resource base of the digital economy, already representing a critically important asset for big tech. Corporations such as Alphabet, Meta, Microsoft, Amazon and Apple use our personal data to spot market trends, set prices, develop or improve products, train their algorithms, and sell our attention to advertisers — among other uses. Personal data belonging to consumers – like you and me – is also an increasingly important asset for an ever larger range of secondary and ancillary businesses, as well as for governments and their agencies…

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