Regulating Big Tech: the role of enhanced disclosures.
Open accessAbstract
Attempts by governments to curb the market power of ‘Big Tech’ (Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta Platforms, and Microsoft) are impeded by limited public information on their diversified digital platform ecosystems. Big Tech’s annual 10-K financial reports disclose little about their globally dominant ‘free’ services, platform user numbers, and monetization practices, and suites of products. To support antitrust and regulatory oversight, we propose mandatory 10-K type disclosures covering Big Tech’s: (i) internally used operating metrics (e.g. monthly active users), which underpin platform market share and monetization; (ii) ubiquitous ‘free’ products which escape traditional ‘profit and loss’ reporting; (iii) ‘monetization’ processes detailing how platforms make money from user data and attention; and (iv) product-by-product reporting through updating segment reporting rules. Disclosures should be mandatory for digital ‘gatekeepers’ and eventually integrated into reporting standards for all digital platforms.
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Financial reporting frameworks assume a world of consumers purchasing physical commodities in more or less competitive markets, rather than a world where rentier profits are generated from the monetisation of freely provided data from users accessing free online services.
“financial reporting frameworks assume a world of consumers purchasing physical commodities in more or less competitive markets, rather than a world where (rentier-) profits are generated from the monetisation of freely provided data from users accessing free online services (Petit and Teece, 2021;Mazzucato et al., 2023).”
From Mapping modern economic rents: the good, the bad, and the grey areas (2023) · cites this paper as Mazzucato et al., 2023
The Introduction (page unavailable) says financial reports were designed for in-person consumption and physical assets, while current disclosures fail to capture free digital services and their indirect monetization. The Introduction also says Big Tech can extract rents from users and firms. The paper does not say that reporting frameworks assume competitive markets or specifically a world of consumers purchasing physical commodities. (LLM, conf=0.83)
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Mapping modern economic rents: the good, the bad, and the grey areas
Mazzucato, M., Ryan-Collins, J., & Gouzoulis, G. (2023) · Cambridge Journal of Economics · doi:10.1093/cje/bead013 · Cited by 54 · see citing works
Self-citation
- Authors
- Mazzucato, M., Strauss, I., O’Reilly, T., & Ryan-Collins, J.
- Affiliations
- University College London (GB)
- University College London, IIPP , UK
- Corresponding author
- Strauss, Ilan
- Venue
- Oxford Review of Economic Policy
- Publisher
- Oxford University Press (OUP)
- Published
- 2023-01-01
- Volume
- 39
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 47-69
- ISSN
- 0266-903X (ISSN-L)
- 1460-2121
- OpenAlex
- W4320009323
- Cited by
- 15
- References
- 0
- Citations by year
- 2026: 2 · 2025: 3 · 2024: 7 · 2023: 3
- FWCI
- 2.43
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- discovery.ucl.ac.uk
- Locations
- Oxford Review of Economic Policy (publishedVersion)
- UCL Discovery (University College London) (submittedVersion)
- RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Business, Management and Accounting › Strategy and Management › Diverse Legal and Medical Studies
- Social Sciences › Business, Management and Accounting › Accounting › Auditing, Earnings Management, Governance
- Social Sciences › Business, Management and Accounting › Strategy and Management › Digital Platforms and Economics
- Keywords
- Big Tech, competition law, digital platform ecosystems, free services, platform monetization, attention economy, segment reporting, disclosure requirements, digital gatekeepers
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