Webinar | Data Cartels. The Companies That Control and Monopolize Our Information.

Her latest book, Data Cartels, revolves around the fact that, in our digital world, data is power. It brings us into the unregulated underworld of information hoarding businesses, where they reign supreme, using intimidation, aggression, and force to maintain influence and control over data. It demonstrates how the entities mining, commodifying, and selling our data and informational resources perpetuate social inequalities and threaten the democratic sharing of knowledge.

It is a reality today that just a few companies dominate most of our critical informational resources. Often self-identifying as "data analytics" or "business solutions" operations, they supply the digital lifeblood that flows through the circulatory system of the internet. With their control over data, they can prevent the free flow of information, masterfully exploiting outdated information and privacy laws and curating online information in a way that amplifies digital racism and targets marginalized communities. They can also distribute private information to predatory entities. Alarmingly, everything they're doing is perfectly legal.

In this book, Lamdan contends that privatization and tech exceptionalism have prevented us from creating effective legal regulation. This in turn has allowed oversized information oligopolies to coalesce. In addition to specific legal and market-based solutions, Lamdan calls for treating information like a public good and creating digital infrastructure that supports our democratic ideals.