Our current attempts to tame the tech giants are destined to fail. Instead of trying to recover the old analog world, we should be asking ourselves what sort of digital world we want to live in. Only once we have that vision for the future will we know what to do in the present, writes Martin Moore.

Governments around the world are desperate to tame Big Tech. In the US, a freshly empowered Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and State prosecutors across the country have launched antitrust actions against Facebook and Google, with investigations ongoing into Amazon and Apple. In China, the ruling Communist Party has halted public offerings, forced restructurings, launched antitrust action, and threatened onerous regulation of its home-grown tech platforms, wiping billions off their value. In Europe the EU, which has a long track record of fining and regulating US tech giants, is in the process of passing the most extensive regulation to date, with a Digital Services Act and Digital Markets Act. And, here in the UK the government has put forward a draft Online Safety Bill which, if it goes through, will oblige tech platforms to take on a ‘duty of care’ to their users.