facebook and amazon dismissed the tech critics as an industry for activists and an opportunity for rivals to put on the moniker of consumer protectionthe antitech professionals agree on many broad points that the companies have too much power and have transformed commerce and communication but they have sometimes found themselves at odds with one another and do not agree on the fixes some support using antitrust laws to take on the companies potentially breaking them up others said tougher regulations were better to rein in the firmsimagecreditchip somodevillagetty imagessarah miller executive director of american economic liberties project a group focused on corporate concentration favors breaking up the companies she said there was jockeying to put forward ideas but that the movement was a fairly aligned functional ecosystemmany of the groups are increasingly well funded billionaires including mr soros and pierre omidyar the ebay cofounder who backs luminate and other groups have poured tens of millions of dollars into opposing the tech industry mr hughes a cofounder of facebook is funding think tanks and activists who pressure the companiesinstitutions like the ford foundation are also funding civil society groups and research efforts to study techs harms and human rights groups such as amnesty international human rights watch and the antidefamation league have devoted more resources to techaccountability issuesif you compare today to five years ago there is a much different awareness among policymakers and the public said vera franz deputy director of the open society foundations information program an organization backed by mr soros that has spent 24 million this year on groups focused on privacy online discrimination and other tech topics the key question is how to translate that awareness to real change and real accountabilitythe antitech movements first signs of success came in the european union about a decade ago when some of googles rivals banded together to persuade regulators to investigate the company for antitrust violations the resulting cases cost google more than 9 billion in finesin 2016 the opponents scored another victory when the european union passed a landmark data privacy law the general data protection regulation which many lawyers and activists now use against the tech companiesin the united states few were alarmed by techs power until the 2016 presidential election when russia used social media to spread disinformation and sow political discord in 2018 the cambridge analytica scandal exposed facebooks weak privacy safeguards and added to the momentumsince then the influence of industry critics has swelled antitrust lawyers and economists focused on tech accountability are in demand at law firms and think tanks civil society groups eager to investigate the industry are hiring data scientists and researchers universities are adding programs looking at techs harmbookstores are also stocking titles like the age of surveillance capitalism by the harvard professor shoshana zuboff about how companies like facebook and google try to predict and control human behavior netflix films like the social dilemma which is critical of social media have become surprise hitstristan harris a former