Big Tech and Political Equality

The literature on Big Tech companies has now become so voluminous to constitute its own field of research. This is unsurprising when one considers the impact that the “Gang of Four”—Google, Apple, Facebook, and Amazon—have had on our lives. This chapter explores a different aspect of the rise of Big Tech: their growing role as key political players and the implications that this has for the central democratic principle of political equality. The corporate law literature has framed a new trend as just an expansion of corporate social responsibility (CSR), with this expansion being prompted by a change in stakeholder moral preferences. CSR is largely viewed as a private contribution to the production of public goods—that is, a market-driven response to government failures. Now, it is evident that corporate conformity is not formally compatible with the requirements that operationalize the principle of political equality.