ORCID
Jan Polański – 0000-0002-4048-1860
Keywords
antitrust, Big Tech, First Amendment, free speech, marketplace of ideas, regulation
Abstract
In 1961, Alexander Meiklejohn claimed that the First Amendment, the US provision guaranteeing free speech, is an absolute. Echoing this in the context of the rise of fake news, Tim Wu has recently asked whether the First Amendment might have become obsolete. Yet, with the growing power of Big Tech, concerns are also voiced that their impact on free speech may go too far. However, there is tension here: on the one hand, the unprecedented role of Big Tech provides incentives for regulation; on the other, free speech is such a sensitive subject that there are reasons for limiting government interference. Against this backdrop, this article investigates whether the current situation is indeed unprecedented: it looks into the past, present, and future of market-situated free speech. It concludes that free speech might be incomplete, since while the impact of Big Tech is not unprecedented, free speech involves (historically) unresolved issues.
Acknowledgements
Funding
This article received no funding
The cost of editing selected articles published in the Yearbook of Antitrust and Regulatory Studies in the 2022–2024 is covered by funding under the program “Development of scientific journals” of the Ministry of Education and Science under agreement No. RCN/SN/0324/2021/1. Task title: “Verification and correction of scientific articles and their abstracts”. Funding value: 36 298,00 PLN; The task consists of professional editing of articles published in English.
Declaration of Conflict of Interests
The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and publication of this article.
Declaration about the scope of AI utilisation
The author did not use AI tools in the preparation of this article.
Recommended Citation
Polański, J. (2024). Free Speech is Incomplete? Big Tech in a Distant Mirror. Yearbook of Antitrust and Regulatory Studies, 17(30), 41-73. https://doi.org/10.7172/1689-9024.YARS.2024.17.30.2
First Page
41
Last Page
73
Page Count
33
Received Date
15.01.2024
Accepted Date
29.07.2024
DOI
10.7172/1689-9024.YARS.2024.17.30.2
JEL Code
K20, K21, K38
Publisher
University of Warsaw
