[...] The task of improving safety could not be left to industry, as market incentives mitigated against such an investment. “A democratic government is far better equipped to resolve competing interests and determine whatever is required [to improve safer transport] than are firms whose all-absorbing aim is higher and higher profits,” wrote Ralph Nader in 1965 in his seminal book, Unsafe at Any Speed. These safety problems were fixable; they were problems of design rather than individual responsibility. But they required centrally imposed rules to achieve this.

There are strategic limits to this logic. Arguments framed around consumer rights still rely on assumptions about the inherent value of the free market, and a commitment to making it a more functional mode of relations. But if we neglect this field, we lose important ground in the public debate about regulation. Even the most committed libertarian would struggle to justify abolishing the Food and Drug Administration on the basis that it limited individual freedom. No one would agree that an ideal society would require people to take responsibility for testing their food to check that it has not been poisoned. We expect a well-run society would have a process in place, centrally administered, to enforce the relevant rules as much as possible in an efficient way.

There is no reason why technological products could not be subject to similar testing and approval. Biased algorithms would be identified, automatic processes that produce perverse outcomes could be stopped before they are shipped. In the course of finding these examples, there would be a platform for public debate about how to respond to them. A consumer protection lens can help us think of other potential reforms. This might include prohibiting the use of data (including its sale) for any purpose other than the purpose that it was given by the user. This is what consumers currently expect, but not what companies actually deliver.