Kamilah Ebrahim, The Limits of Anti-Trust Regulation

The current monopoly over data production, collection and information centralizes epistemic power and the capacity to accumulate economic capital through data. At the same time this process dispossesses marginalized and racialized communities from the data they are producing. The result is a dynamic that mirrors the dispossession created through colonialism in a new form of “techno-imperialism”. Current debates surrounding monopoly structures in technology tend to focus on the economic effects rather than the epistemic consequences, this talk will refocus this conversation and consider the pros and cons of anti-trust policy solutions currently being considered in Canada.