Regulators Are Finally Catching Up With Big Tech

In 2024, we will see courts and regulators around the world demonstrate that tech exceptionalism, when it comes to the applicability of legal rules, is magical thinking. The tide has already started to turn on the assumption that law and regulation cannot keep up with technological innovation. But, in 2024, the sea change will come: not through new rules, but by old rules being applied aggressively to new problems. In the United States, in the absence of federal privacy legislation, regulators have already started to repurpose laws and rules they do have at their disposal to address some of the most egregious examples of Big Tech playing fast and loose with our rights and personal data. In 2023, the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) continued to expand the regulatory heft of consumer protection regulations.