The problem here isn't a lack of competition. This happens because tech companies are well-equipped to siphon user data at massive scale and have been given th

The problem here isn't a lack of competition. This happens because tech companies are well-equipped to siphon user data at massive scale and have been given the luxury of embedding these services into our daily lives without sufficiently educating the public around their business models. Ultimately, the public has very little control over what these companies do with this data, so there's a perverse mismatch of incentives here. Tech companies are incentivized to collect user data and not explain how it's used. Tech companies are incentivized to pay lobbyists to discourage the government from placing a market value on data. The public doesn't have that kind of lobbying influence.