The global regulatory curtain for tech giants and Internet giants is slowly falling.

Beginning in 2018, Facebook was attacked for allowing the transfer of user information to a third-party company called Cambridge Data “Analysis”, which in turn sparked a big debate in the Western world about whether tech giants are evil. Google, Apple, Amazon, etc. are all involved, either abusing user information and violating user privacy, or using platform advantages to suppress rivals and upstream and downstream suppliers.

Over the past few decades, tech giants have been praised and worshipped, and they have conquered cities in technologically neutral havens, which can be described as the Gilded Age. But the belief in tech giants is being shaken, and the Internet winner-take-all model is beginning to reflect. Will Leviathan-style tech giants turn back and turn from teenagers into dragons? The FAANG has been through waves of regulatory hearings and inquiries, and it’s not yet complete. From the government to the people, distrust is written all over their faces.

Once the regulatory consensus is formed in the United States, the FAANG will hit the regulatory wall head-on, while Europe has already sharpened its knife.

A month ago, China’s Internet giants were still “in good times”. Over the years, the public is almost numb to the “bad deeds” of big companies in excessive information grabbing. The phrase “Chinese users are willing to trade privacy for convenience” expresses the frivolity and arrogance of big companies. In the face of big Internet companies taking advantage of their platforms to swept the industrial chain, from finance to entertainment, the government is a hoot, and the public has mixed feelings. On the one hand, the Internet has indeed brought commercial innovation and convenience to consumption, bringing vitality and popularity to the Chinese economy; on the other hand, the blatant “choose one”, if this is not monopoly and coercion, the anti-monopoly law can be shelved.

Regulation may have been brewing, but Jack Ma pushed it. At the Bund Summit, he shouted that supervision was counterproductive. Interviews, new regulations on online small loans, and the suspension of listing not only made Ant face a painful rectification, but also made the entire Internet giants eager to try the financial technology field suddenly quiet.

For a long time, who will supervise the ants is a must-answer question in front of the financial technology market. The financial innovation of the ants, arbitrage between technology and financial services, using credit business as a profit cow, but resisting the Basel agreement that is universal to financial enterprises. This asymmetric market competition, relying on scenarios and data to make banks accompany them to increase leverage, is likely to cause systemic risks in the financial sector. The risk control that the ants are proud of has not passed the stress test of a complete economic cycle after all. In the financial market, not only data, but also human nature are traded.

The tree wants to be still but the wind is not constant. Immediately after, the State Administration for Market Regulation released a draft of the “Anti-Monopoly Guidelines on Platform Economy” for comments to correct the monopolistic behavior of Internet platforms. In a few days, Alibaba, Tencent, JD.com, Meituan and other major Chinese Internet companies have lost about 2 trillion in market value. The platform abuses its market position and uses the ecology to engage in closed loop (monopoly), which will become more and more difficult to open up and talk nonsense in the future.

The two most savagely growing and most spectacular areas of China’s Internet economy, financial technology and e-commerce platforms, will dance in “shackles” from now on.

“Internet technology giants have a large amount of data and market share, which can easily form a monopoly and inhibit fair competition.” Zhou Xiaochuan, former governor of the central bank, said.

The world is hot and cold. At this point, the world is still flat.