24 Steps to regulate big tech

The core reason we can’t regulate big tech (the GAFAM or however you want to call them these days) is that politicians don’t understand where to start. And it’s because they don’t understand the underlying digital business model on which they operate.

Anil Dash gives us the step-by-step 24 specific points on how these companies operate. From building a culture platform that insists on being a neutral tech pipe to hiring a monoculture team solely focused on growth, hiding behind a sacrosanct algorithm that can’t be revisited, etc.

That broken tech/content culture cycle

Here’s how you do it. Build a platform which relies on cultural creation as its core value, but which only sees itself as a technology platform. Stick to this insistence on being solely a “neutral” tech company in every aspect of decision-making, policy, hiring and operations, except for your

Anil DashAnil Dash

Every single one of these steps is a regulation entry point. Work on regulations on two or three of them, and you slow down these now mindless machines. With four or five, you pretty much break their cycle of negativity and force them to be responsible for their content.

The beauty of this is that many points are about the culture of the employer-workforce relationship from within these companies, and this is probably, as we speak, their weakest spot.