Recommended Citation
Jodi L. Short; Reuel E, Schiller; Susan Sibley; Noah Jones; Babak Hammatian; and Lee Anna Bowman-Carpio,
The Dog That Didn’t Bark: Looking for Techno-Libertarian Ideology in a Decade of Public Discourse about Big Tech Regulation, 19
Ohio St. Tech. L.J.
1
(2023).
Available at: https://repository.uclawsf.edu/faculty_scholarship/1995
Publication Date
2023
Abstract
The internet was built on the techno-libertarian ideology that “information wants to be free,” and that ideology has played a prominent role in academic and policy debates about regulating the internet and the big technology companies that dominate it.2 Techno-libertarian ideology has generated a constellation of claims about tech and regulation—from the suggestion that regulation will stifle innovation in the complex, dynamic tech sector, to the assertion that the large platform companies are literally not regulable. In this article, we explore how much traction such claims and ideologies have in the broader public discourse about big tech and regulation. We employ an innovative methodology—topic modeling—to track public discourse on the regulation of big technology from 2010 to 2020. We find that techno- libertarian ideas about free markets and information freedom play a surprisingly small role in this discourse. Indeed, we find that the most common themes in the discourse about big tech and regulation concern: calls to regulate big tech companies; growing critiques of technology’s influence in society; and declining discussion of the tech sector as a driver of economic growth. Our findings should embolden legal and policy advocates to pursue regulatory initiatives aimed at addressing the social and economic harms produced by the technology sector knowing that the techno-libertarian rhetoric likely to be deployed against them may not have sufficient public traction to win the day.
Document Type
Article
Publication Title
Ohio State technology Law Journal