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Abstract

Individual choice is being threatened. Private companies already held the ability to nudge consumer choices with targeted advertising. Now, with the rise in data collection and the innovation of technology and machine learning, companies are beginning to garner the ability to entirely manipulate them. Major companies can create a psychographic profile of any user using copious amounts of data collected and stored in what is essentially a library of information on each user. With access to personal or sensitive data from multiple digital markets, the profile could not only correctly identify not only a user’s likes and dislikes, but even pinpoint the user’s flaws, doubts, and other inner demons. A company with such discrete knowledge could exploit those weaknesses and influence the individual to think or act a certain way. Under current U.S. antitrust law, such companies would be unstoppable. Using Big Tech as its main example, this Article argues that private companies can utilize big data to inflict serious harm in American society. At best, they can sway public opinion in their favor or against their competitors. At worst, they can control the populace. Currently, massive corporations that make up Big Tech have that level of power, despite the anticompetitive implications. This Article focuses on how Big Tech’s vast collection of users’ data can be used to manipulate those consumers’ social, economic, and political decisions. It argues that such manipulation is already occurring and is inherently anticompetitive, as it destroys personal autonomy while perpetuating further private power and control. Ultimately, this Article calls for the reinterpretation of the Sherman Act to encapsulate big data, creating a division of the Federal Trade Commission to monitor and regulate its use by Big Tech.

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