[nequo]

I think there is nothing special about tech. Facebook, Amazon, Google, Apple, Microsoft are big companies with a lot of market power. They use their market power to maximize their profits (as they probably should) and perpetuate that market power (as they probably also should since they are not charities).

This has negative effects on many others in the economy. For example, Amazon bleeding out small retailers by capturing their supply chains and treating its own workers badly. Or Facebook manipulating teenagers into using its product despite the known negative effects on their mental health because engagement = money.

In such situations, something needs to counteract these companies' market power in order to reduce the negative effects on others. This can be consumer protections, labor laws, unions, antitrust litigation, or other types of regulation.

We've lived with a ton of such regulation that we don't even think about because it seems common sense. For example, we are not allowed to smoke inside a hospital, send our 10-year-olds to work in coal mines, or (supposedly) be forced to work 70-hour workweeks without overtime pay. It is only that the tech sector is too recent and we haven't figured out how to dampen its negative effects.

[socialismisok]

I agree, these aren't anything special and we should treat them like other big companies. The challenge is that the product can be a bit novel, and when the laws try to catch up to that novelty, it's perceived as being "against" tech. When in actuality it's just trying to adapt the rules we have to a changing world.

(I'd disagree that companies should maximize profit, but that's just a bit of an unrelated ideological difference.)