US lawmakers are scrambling for bills aimed at curbing the power of the country’s biggest tech companies, because they believe the window of opportunity to do so is rapidly closing as the final legislative election approaches. this year.
In a significant step forward, a Senate committee voted on Thursday to advance a bill that would ban companies like Amazon, Apple and Google from promoting their own products over those of competitors. Many lawmakers in the US House of Representatives are pushing to pass a package of antitrust measures that would make it easier to spin off the tech giants. And some are making final efforts to pass bills aimed at enforcing privacy, protecting children online, curbing misinformation, restricting targeted advertising, and regulating artificial intelligence and cryptocurrencies.
Most of the proposals being processed in Congress have a low chance of approval. President Joe Biden and the Democratic leadership in Congress have said that tackling the power of the tech sector is a top priority, but numerous other issues are above this one on their list. These include passing laws guaranteeing the right to vote, fixing problems in supply chains and the labor market, passing a package of social services and helping the country leave the Covid-19 pandemic behind.
Still, the next few months are probably the last and best chance to make headway on this front for some time. After that, efforts will turn to the end-of-year elections, and Democrats, who support efforts to control the tech sector in greater numbers than Republicans, could lose control of Congress.
“This is a problem that’s been growing for a long time and it’s become pretty obvious to everyone,” said Senator Amy Klobuchar, a Minnesota Democrat who is leading efforts to create tougher laws for tech companies. “But when we get to the fourth quarter, it will be very difficult to accomplish anything because everything will be focused on the election.”
Congress has rallied around a growing concern for tech giants in recent years. But still dozens of bills failed, while other countries tightened their regulation of the sector.
When Biden took office last year, he promised to inject more competition into the economy, especially in the tech sector. He nominated outspoken critics of big industry companies to lead antitrust agencies, and this month his press secretary said Biden was “encouraged to see bipartisan interest in Congress in passing laws that deal with the power of tech platforms.” through antitrust legislation”.
Bruce Reed, Biden’s deputy chief of staff, and Brian Deese, director of the National Economic Council, met on Wednesday with executives from companies including Yelp and Sonos that have pushed for antitrust action against the giants of technology. They discussed the difficulties that “entrepreneurs, brick-and-mortar merchants and other companies face in competing in industries dominated by a few big platforms,” ​​White House representatives said. The administration has stated that it hopes to work with Congress, but has not endorsed any specific legislation aimed at companies.
One complicating factor is that while the two parties generally agree on the need for Congress to do something, they often disagree on what that thing would be.
In recent years, dozens of bills on privacy, free speech, security and antitrust have languished amid disagreements over how to balance consumer protection while encouraging the growth of Silicon Valley. Some of the bills, such as those dealing with online content moderation, are especially polarizing: Democrats are calling for measures that would lead companies to remove more misinformation and content that causes real harm from their websites, and Republicans support laws that would force companies to keep most of the posted content online.
“Everyone has something to complain about with big tech companies, but when it comes time to do something, that’s where bipartisanship disappears,” said Rebecca Allensworth, a professor at the Vanderbilt School of Law and an expert in antitrust law. “At the end of the day, regulation is regulation, so it will be difficult to convince a reasonable number of Republicans to support a measure seen as an aggressive ploy to reduce the influence of big tech companies through regulation.”
The bill that the Senate Judiciary Committee passed on Thursday, for example, could prevent Amazon from driving shoppers to its branded toilet paper and socks, while making comparisons between those products and competing brands difficult. It could force Apple to offer alternatives to Apple Pay in iPhone apps. And prevent Google from putting its services, such as travel pricing, restaurant reviews, and shopping, at the top of its search engine results list.
Presented by Klobuchar and Republican Senator Charles Grassley of Iowa, the bill is intended to address concerns about the position of a select few technology companies as controllers of access to digital goods and services. Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Microsoft have a combined market value of over $9 trillion. Several Republicans voted in favor of the bill, which passed by 16 votes to six. While Mike Lee, a Republican senator from Utah, echoed the party’s constant stance on the “unwanted consequences” for future business the new law could bring, other lawmakers said the threat posed by big tech companies is more serious than that these concerns.
Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, voted in favor of the bill and emphasized that his biggest concern was the way in which social media giants moderate content. He and other Republican members of the committee said they believe companies like Apple, Google and Facebook censor conservative voices by deleting apps like Parler, a right-wing website, and removing accounts of conservative figures.
Silicon Valley lobbyists fought the bill through opinion pieces, advertising campaigns and personal appeals. Sundar Pichai, chief executive of Alphabet, the parent company of Google, and Tim Cook, chief executive of Apple, called lawmakers to express opposition to the measure.
Business lobbyists argued that the bill would make fighting malware and device defects more difficult, and could make companies’ services less useful. Kent Walker, Google’s legal vice president, posted on a company blog Tuesday a grim view of the impact the bill and other similar measures could have: the company could no longer include a map of vaccination sites. in its search results if the measure passes, he said. Might have to stop blocking spam in Gmail. It could be prevented from showing “clear information” to someone seeking medical help, and “instead forced to refer the person to a combination of low-quality results.”
The companies also said the proposals — which focus on their size — would also hurt small businesses. In recent months, Amazon has been urging merchants selling products in its marketplace to contact their lawmakers to express concern about the bills.
Translation by Paulo Migliacci
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