This past January, the U.S. Department of Justice, along with attorneys general from California, Colorado, Connecticut, New York, Rhode Island, Tennessee, and Virginia, sued Google for allegedly “monopolizing” digital advertising technology. The lawsuit alleges that Google monopolizes key digital advertising technologies, collectively referred to as the “ad tech stack,” that media owners must use to purchase advertisers at the time of ad sales. Through this monopoly litigation, the DOJ and state attorney generals will seek to restore competition in these important markets and obtain equitable and monetary relief on behalf of the American people.

Also this month, the New York Times reported that the U.S. Department of Justice is investigating allegations that ByteDance, which owns TikTok, spied on journalists and other Americans. The investigation was launched late last year after ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok, admitted that its employees had inadvertently obtained information on American users of the social app, including data on two journalists and their associates, the New York Times reported The New York Times reported.

In response to the fact that platformers such as Google, Amazon, Meta, Apple, ByteDance, and others transcend the boundaries of a single nation and have broad and absolute influence over users, advertisers, and media owners around the world, the United States and Europe have been speedily developing and enforcing laws and regulations in recent years. In the U.S. and Europe, the development and enforcement of laws and regulations has been proceeding swiftly in recent years. In addition, while there have been Chinese companies such as Tencent and Alibaba that have established a presence as giant platformers mainly within their home countries, ByteDance is the first platformer from China to develop globally, and the political, economic, and military tensions between the U.S. and China, coupled with the U.S.-China ByteDance is the first global platform from China.

As for Japan, it seems that Japan lags behind Western countries in the development and enforcement of laws in this area. Furthermore, the above news is not covered extensively in the various media, and I feel that there are few opportunities for individual citizens to pay attention to or think about it. Within a few years, there is a possibility that these platformers will be dismantled and various administrative measures will be taken, including measures to deal with the data they hold. I hope that discussions on how to deal with platformers will progress in Japan as much as possible, and at the same time, the groundwork will be laid for a variety of next-generation services that utilize overwhelming technology and data!

Masaki “Mark” Iino
Founder & CEO
SOPHOLA, Inc