Do Americans Need Stronger Legal Protections Online?
- November 13, 2025
- CBR - Economics
The digital services and tools upon which many of us have come to rely—for working, shopping, socializing, banking, and other parts of our increasingly online lives—come with trade-offs. They are fast, convenient, easily accessible, and often don’t cost any money, but they still carry a price. For example, social media can damage our mental or emotional health, expose us to incessant digital surveillance, or risk exposing our personal information to fraudsters.
Do costs such as these warrant new legislation to define Americans’ rights concerning the use of their own data, or to establish safety standards and accountability frameworks for the providers of digital services? Chicago Booth’s Kent A. Clark Center for Global Markets polled its US panel of economic experts.
Aaron Edlin, University of California at Berkeley
“Consumers currently trade their data for use of services. A mere default allows consumers to continue to make this trade.”
Response: Disagree
Oliver Hart, Harvard
“If control is sufficiently important to platforms, they can always buy it back from consumers.”
Response: Agree
Richard H. Thaler, Chicago Booth
“I agree with this in theory, but in practice, GDPR [the General Data Protection Regulation, passed in 2016] in the European Union seems to just produce sludge. If you reject the default cookies, you often get sent down a rabbit hole. One-click opt out would be good, or a phone setting even better.”
Response: Agree
Judith Chevalier, Yale
“Some safety standards seem appropriate, but liability structures that create more platform liability for user-generated content have important costs and benefits.”
Response: Uncertain
Steve Kaplan, Chicago Booth
“This is not an easy problem to solve. Mandating a legal solution will reduce innovation and move toward European-type solutions that do not work.”
Response: Strongly Disagree
Christopher Udry, Northwestern
“Creating the regulations will be hard, and there is not a lot of convincing evidence on some of the potential harms, but there are some that are serious, well-documented, and with unclear legal frameworks.”
Response: Agree
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