A new paper by University of Auckland Professor Susan Watson argues governments need a structural approach to regulating Big Tech, contending that major platforms now hold power comparable to that of states.
In the paper, Reining in Big Tech Corporations: Why Platform Governance Requires Structural Regulation, Watson says companies such as Amazon, Meta and Google no longer compete within markets in the conventional sense, but instead own essential digital infrastructure and set rules for the businesses and individuals who depend on their platforms.
Watson argues part of the problem lies in how corporations are commonly understood. She says they are often treated as private businesses rather than legal entities created and empowered by states, and that this misunderstanding has obscured the source of platform power and contributed to an inadequate regulatory response.
The paper outlines how incorporation creates what the law treats as an artificial legal person, allowing a company to own property, enter contracts, make internal rules, and persist over time independent of changes in ownership or leadership. Watson argues these characteristics, combined with the ability to retain and reinvest capital, help explain how technology firms have accumulated and entrenched influence.
“Capitalism is both one of humanity’s greatest inventions, the greatest source of prosperity the world has ever seen, and a menace on the verge of destroying our planet and destabilising society,” she says. “Big Tech corporations are the latest and most potent manifestation.”
The paper, which will form part of a Cambridge University Press collection edited by Professor Alexandra Andhov, draws comparisons with earlier eras of concentrated corporate power, including the English East India Company and late-19th century US industrial consolidation.
Watson points to the 1890 Sherman Act and subsequent actions to break up companies controlling key infrastructure as examples of how governments have previously intervened when corporate power became too concentrated. She argues today’s technology platforms represent a modern form of that dynamic, operating across digital rather than physical territory.
The paper also notes that large technology firms can influence government policy, including through lobbying against laws that could restrict their activities, and by positioning governments as customers or partners for their technology.
Watson proposes several regulatory options, including banning surveillance-based business models, limiting Big Tech companies’ claims over data, and requiring major platforms to be licensed under conditions that affect their ongoing operation.
Another proposal raised in the paper is to increase participation in platform governance by people affected by these companies. Watson cites the Whanganui River in New Zealand, which was granted legal personhood as part of a governance model involving shared responsibility, and suggests a similar concept could be adapted for major technology platforms, with regulators and the state providing oversight.
Watson argues users and employees, as groups most directly affected by platform decisions, could reasonably expect their interests to be considered in governance arrangements.
“Corporations have been likened to Frankenstein’s monster. They are artificial persons created by man. Just as we make them, we can unmake them, or reform and re-form them in a way that serves us all rather than just the gilded few.”
Watson is scheduled to discuss the paper’s themes at a New Zealand Centre for Leadership and Governance panel discussion on Wednesday 12 August 2026, alongside Honorary Associate Professor Jonathan Hardman and tech researcher Matt Bartlett.
