Dominating Software Systems: How to Overcome Online Information Asymmetry

Today, computer science graduates start companies to create market-dominating, Internet-scale software solutions for hundreds of millions of users. These entrepreneurs want to achieve the success of digital corporations such as Google, Facebook, or Amazon. There is an information asymmetry between current Internet-scale software systems and their users. Although these dominating systems know much about their users, the users know very little about the systems. This asymmetry makes it hard for people to understand the disadvantages of using dominating software systems. In particular, there is an unknown or hidden risk that the systems will cause massive job losses as they move into more and more markets. Because existing Internetscale systems negatively impact society, start-ups as well as established companies should consider the societal impact when they design and grow Internet-scale solutions.^1-4