[jayspell]

Not the original poster - just replying with some ideas...

I would purpose that Google in particular be broken into many different companies. The fact that they own such a large part of mobile, browser, search, video, email, news aggregation, online office products is hugely problematic. I believe one of the issues that was not highlighted is the overall reach of these companies, they focus in on the mobile aspect, but there are huge swathes of data being collected via other means. Search in particular should not have a bias in the autocomplete - search should be agnostic, like Wikipedia. When I search it should show the same results as when you search. Next there should be a requirement that these companies provide access to a users data back to them, along with the analytical output that creates their digital avatar. There should be the ability to FULLY delete the data per a request. Next there should be a requirement that the sites provide ability to utilize their services with browser anonymity enabled. Much of the data leakage is harvested automatically from the mobile device or browser, the ability to slow the trickle of information should be required by law. Perhaps a requirement that a price that an advertiser paid for each ad should show up, and an opportunity for the user to opt-out and pay for the service instead at the same rates in truly anonymized fashion. More extreme options - restrictions on access based on age, we do this for cigarettes and alcohol, perhaps this should be applied to social media as well. Perhaps there should be a throttle on data gathering or hard limits placed on how much data can be pulled in and kept. Require maximum data retention periods on this data to make the models dumber. We have data retention periods set for health data - why not restrict it for social media.

[afarviral]

Time and time again I see it suggested that these "lets be evil" giant companies like Google be split up. I'm coming around to this. They aren't able to be accountable because they are far too giant (not necessarily in the head-count sense) to be influenced by human conscience. They take on a life of their own, unconstrained by their externalities, adapting like DNA, optimizing for their survival at any cost. Force these tech giants to split up, because we agree as a society that they are evil (or at least problematic). The individual people that make up the mini-corps will then have more influence to steer these mini-hydras. What about shareholders?