AAII Survey: Should the Largest Tech Companies Be Broken Up?

We seemingly have a love-hate relationship with social media. Many of us can’t go more than a few minutes without checking our Facebook, Twitter or Instagram accounts. Others have completely shunned it.

While social media is a great way to stay in touch with people, it can be abused as well. From “fake news” and hacking of personal information to the spreading of hate speech and cyberbullying, social media has also come under a cloud in recent years.

For that reason, there have been calls in some corners of government for the large technology companies to come under greater oversight or even be broken up.

AAII Weekly Survey Question

To see where our readers stand on the topic, last week’s survey question asked:

Do you think the federal government should break up the largest technology companies into smaller, competing companies to lessen their influence over public communication?

Here are the results:

In all, 1,927 readers participated.

More than one-third (35%) say they strongly disagree with the idea of breaking up the largest technology companies while another 19% say they somewhat disagree.

Nearly one-quarter (24%) of respondents say they somewhat agree that the largest tech companies should be broken up to lessen their influence on public communication. Sixteen percent say they strongly agree that the federal government should break up the largest technology firms.

So, slightly more than half of our readers (54%) believe to some degree that the largest technology companies should not be broken up by the federal government while 40% believe to some extent that the large technology companies hold too much influence over public communication and should be broken up.

Weekly Special Question

While the majority of our readers do not believe that the large technology companies should be broken up, we were curious to see which firms they feel hold too much influence over public communication.

So last week’s special question asked:

Which technology company do you think carries the most influence over public communication? Do you think it should face increased oversight and regulation or be broken up, or should free market forces be allowed to prevail?

In all, we received 214 responses.

Perhaps not surprising, Facebook was referenced the most (40%) as the tech company that carries the most influence over public communication. Of those mentioning Facebook, 92% say that it should be broken up to lessen its influence over public communication.

Coming in a distant second (20%) was Google as the tech company carrying the most influence over public communication. Among this group, 88% also believe that Google should be broken up to reduce the power it wields over public communication.

Twitter came in an even more distant third place (4%).

Nearly 29% of those responding said that the federal government should not be involved with technology companies and/or the marketplace should dictate what happens to them.

Here is a sampling of the responses as to why our readers support or do not support oversight and regulation of social media companies:

• “Google should be thoroughly investigated by the DOJ! I’m certain it promotes leftist/liberal information in its searches and suppresses information which doesn’t promote leftist/liberal ideology.”
• “Apple et al., should be left to market forces. Remember, AT&T was broken up once and look at it now!”
• “The problem with some of these new tech communication companies is that it appears there is no adult supervision in the decision-making process.”
• “Free market capitalism isn’t perfect but it works. Leave it alone.”
• “Amazon, with AWS and cloud services, will be the biggest influence over public communications in the next decade. But free market forces should control.”
• “Just like The Washington Post, The New York Times, PBS News Hour and the like, they should all be free to communicate. No amount of government oversight can protect people from their own stupidity.”

Everybody has an opinion! Why not give us yours? Participate in our weekly member poll, updated every Monday, and see the results online at www.aaii.com/memberquestion.