The tide seems to be turning on the unquestioned power of Techlandia Behemoths:
From the revelations of Facebook’s role in Russian alleged-interference in the US presidential elections, to civil actions being brought against Apple to do more about its role in cell phone addiction in kids, to a Chinese consumer group suing Baidu for privacy violations, there are signs that the general population have had enough. The foot is down! The folks seem to want something done about it. And all within a very narrow band of time too.
Of course, this may all amount to being nothing much but a few sharks sniffing some blood and acting opportunistically. I mean, look at how successful learnings from Enron and the resulting Sarbanes-Oxley brouhaha were at stopping those sorts of corporate failures again. For… ooh… nearly six years? So even any wins out of these actions may not prove to achieve much in the longer term.
Still, sometimes great changes have humble beginnings. Mrs Donoghue and her little snail that made her pale could hardly have expected their case would give rise to all sorts of consumer protections such as the expectation of duty of care in a manufacturer, or the idea that certain conduct by a supplier might be considered negligent. And when he started, could Ralph Nader have known that his little academic interest in just how unsafe cars were in the 1950s and 60s could take on the might of Detroit, and win?
So early days still to tell where all this litigation on so many fronts might lead, but I think I, too, am smelling a little blood in the water. History will reveal all in due course.