Who is Really Big Tech's Biggest Regulator?

Yesterday, an article featured on the front page on the New York Times homepage had the headline, E.U. Takes Aim at Big Tech’s Power With Landmark Digital Act" (https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/24/technology/eu-regulation-apple-meta-google.html). As stated in the article, "With these actions, Europe is cementing its leadership as the most assertive regulator of tech companies such as Apple, Google, Amazon, Meta and Microsoft." Only three days before the article, in a dynamic interview that was released on the New York Times' podcast the Sway between host Kara Swisher and Silicon Valley's congressman, Ro Khanna, an argument was made that it's not the EU but actually Tim Cook who's proven to be the biggest regulator of big tech, particularly for Meta  (https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/21/opinion/sway-kara-swisher-ro-khanna.html). Of course While Swisher was somewhat speaking in jest, she made the point that Apple's new data-sharing rules that forced users to opt in to data sharing across apps and sites shaved off $10B off Meta's market cap. Both Khanna and Swisher have agreed that while the EU has been the most forward in its regulations on big tech, the size of the penalties have never been large enough to change fundamentally the behavior of these companies. So the question to ask is if we really want Tim Cook to be the biggest regulator of big tech in our democracy. There's plenty of blame to go around. With the popularity of tech's services, the difficulty of Congress to achieve consensus in our increasingly polarized society, and the mind-boggling amount of lobbying contributions coming from big tech, Khanna argues that what's going to be required to enact positive change is the mobilization of citizenry. Otherwise, we can expect more of the same, without action from our elected officials.