When 68 percent of Americans said they were “concerned about the increased use of artificial intelligence,” they probably weren’t referring to the vacuums in their living rooms. But for some political advocates, this is a genuine concern. Earlier this month, EU antitrust regulators placed Amazon’s $1.7 billion acquisition of iRobot Corp. — the makers of Roomba — under formal investigation.
Some, like the nonprofit Foxglove, call for the deal to be blocked. Foxglove works to keep the United Kingdom government accountable in its dodgy dealings with tech firms, and its advocacy is commendable. But its self-declared “fight with tech billionaires” leads to them blurring the line between privacy and antitrust concerns. It opposes the merger because it doesn’t want Amazon to “consolidate its monopoly over the ‘smart home’ market and step up surveillance of customers.” One of those things is not like the other.
There is room for debate around potential competition concerns. Acquiring iRobot’s 30 million-strong fleet of home robots could give Amazon a competitive advantage, boosting existing profit generators, like the Amazon marketplace. While this is worth looking into, vague concerns like “privacy” and “Amazon surveillance” have nothing to do with competition law — and we shouldn’t let them influence our decision-making.
Groups such as Foxglove see competition law as a tool to push broader and adjacent political goals forward. This isn’t a fringe theory — Foxglove proudly proclaimed this strategy in a post in November, where it painted the very nature of “Big Tech Monopolies” as the root cause of all problems associated with tech. It followed up by pointing to antitrust laws as the apparent solution. Is Facebook failing to moderate toxic content? Break it up. Is Google not complying with privacy laws? Break it up. Is Amazon spying on people in their homes? Break it up.
This thinking isn’t isolated to advocacy groups. Competition regulators in the United States (with the Federal Trade Commission) and the United Kingdom (with the Competition and Markets Authority) have been increasingly ambitious and political with their decision-making. The FTC is facing accusations of politicized actions and decisions, and the CMA was recently in hot water with its decision to block the Microsoft-Activision merger.
I sympathize with these groups’ motivations. Legislative bodies have been dragging their feet when holding Big Tech accountable. However, the solution is not to abdicate our decision-making authority to rogue regulators and advocacy groups. What should concern us most is the growing powers of regulatory bodies, especially as there are no accompanying measures to increase accountability.
The most significant danger of using competition law to enact political change is that it shrouds political motivations, making it harder to dissect and debate their nuances. So let’s look into the actual political concern that Foxglove mentions: Amazon’s “surveillance of customers.”
It’s easy to jump to conclusions about Amazon stealing our data. But to be fair, Amazon hasn’t “snuck” cameras and microphones into our homes; we invited them in.
Our personal data is a resource we own, and we have chosen to sell it to the highest bidder. When someone buys Alexa, they choose to give Amazon their data in return for an associated product and service. Our data subsidizes the cost of many products we buy or use for free.
Of course, it’s vital that our data, like any resource, isn’t stolen. But the solution is simply passing laws to protect our data, not antitrust law. The EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is one of the strongest data protection laws in the world. Some of GDPR’s features, like forcing Facebook to delete any data they have on you, are amazing. Through GDPR, consumers have control over which data their smart appliances share with manufacturers.
Although far from the perfect solution to data privacy, laws like GDPR are a step in the right direction. And they are far more workable than weaponizing antitrust laws in an ideological crusade against Big Tech. To secure data privacy, we should be working to improve and expand existing laws.
Data privacy isn’t always in our interest. A recent study investigated the effects of Ali Baba (the “Chinese Amazon”) turning off e-commerce personalization for 500,000 customers. This simulated the consequences of regulations restricting the ability to use customers’ data to recommend products. The results revealed a significant drop in sales, predominantly affecting small businesses and niche vendors and customers.
Giving Amazon our data can create a more competitive market by tailoring recommendations to users and stopping big brands from leaning on established reputations. If someone wants to sell their data to Amazon and get a better customer experience, they should be free to do so.
We shouldn’t let a vendetta against Big Tech cloud our judgment over a decision that is, at the end of the day, about the automated household cleaning market. We should absolutely pursue the balance between protecting our personal data and promoting innovation. But, we must do so through a democratically accountable legislative body — not with the blunt hammer of a competition regulator. Leave the competition concerns to the economists and lawyers, and the politics to the politicians.
