Support for government action to regulate online services has grown as people’s lives and livelihoods become more dependent on the internet. Rather, these harms are the result of business decisions and market failures, regulatory gaps and enforcement oversights, which have together produced an environment in which harmful and predatory practices among online services are industry standards. The economic, civil rights, privacy, and consumer protection harms from online services are not the necessary “cost” of flourishing online culture, commerce, and innovation. A persistent lack of transparency has compounded the public’s ability to fully understand-let alone address-many of these challenges. 21 These harms have affected all Americans but have had a disproportionate impact on low-income people, people of color, disabled people, and other systematically targeted communities. 12 Americans face these and other harms from online services, including but not limited to widespread fraud, 13 abuse of small businesses, 14 abuse of market power, 15 faulty algorithms, 16 racist and sexist technological development, 17 cybersecurity challenges, 18 threats to workers’ rights, 19 curtailed innovation, 20 and challenges with online radicalization and misinformation. Exploitation of people’s data has created novel consumer threats around privacy, 10 manipulation of consumer behavior, 11 and discrimination. 9 Pervasive, ubiquitous digital surveillance has eroded Americans’ civil liberties. Online service companies have produced substantial wealth, but these gains have failed to reach the American workforce more broadly. Simultaneously, the growth of online services has created new inequalities, acute consumer protection issues, and troubling concentrations of power. They have become an essential part of American lives and livelihoods. 8 Online services have created tremendous benefits and new opportunities for expression. adults worked from home all or most of the time.
6 During the COVID-19 pandemic, nearly 93 percent of households with school-age children used some form of online “distance learning,” 7 and 71 percent of U.S. adults use social media, with large proportions using social media every day, 5 and many get their news through digital channels. gross domestic product (GDP), 3 on par with manufacturing, and nearly 15 percent of U.S. 1 Today, 85 percent of American adults are online every day, with nearly a third online “almost constantly.” 2 This evolution has driven significant economic and social growth: Internet businesses now create 10 percent of U.S. adults said they had never heard of the internet.
Online services have evolved from novel communication tools to ubiquitous infrastructure for the United States’ economy, democracy, and society.