Unlikely Partners
U.S. Senators Graham and Warren join forces in an effort to rein in Big Tech.
In his first Netflix special in 2017, comedian Dave Chappelle told a joke about the reaction people had to seeing him and Chris Tucker, a fellow comedian who had—like Chappelle, after leaving his eponymous show on Comedy Central—been out of the public eye for years.
“It [was] like seeing Big Foot riding a unicorn. You wouldn’t believe that was what you were seeing.”
I thought of this joke after seeing the unlikely alliance of Lindsey Graham and Elizabeth Warren, who penned a guest column for the New York Times taking on Big Tech. Mr. Graham, a Republican from South Carolina, and Warren, a Democrat from Massachusetts see the industry as not only having an outsized impact on the country, but they see it for what it is: ripe for regulation.
“The digital revolution promised amazing new opportunities — and it delivered. Digital platforms promoted social interaction, democratized information and gave us hundreds of new ways to have fun. But digital innovation has had a dark side.
“Giant digital platforms have provided new avenues of proliferation for the sexual abuse and exploitation of children, human trafficking, drug trafficking and bullying and have promoted eating disorders, addictive behaviors and teen suicide. Parents like Kristin Bride, whose teenage son killed himself after being mercilessly cyberbullied, have shared heartbreaking stories with Congress and the public about the potentially deadly consequences.”
As unlikely as the alliance might seem, Ms. Warren has previously teamed up with Texas Senator Ted Cruz, et. al. recently as well, with a call to break up the monopolistic Google by sponsoring the Advertising Middlemen Endangering Rigorous Internet Competition (AMERICA) Act, aimed at the search giants ad business.
What they are saying: They see Big Tech executives’ control of the digital world as a threat to democracy and call on the latter to take responsibility for the role they play in the online world.
“Big Tech companies have far too much unrestrained power over our economy, our society and our democracy. These massive businesses post eye-popping profits while they suppress competition. Google uses its search engine to give preference to its own products, like Google Hotels and Google Flights, giving it an unfair leg up on competitors. Amazon sucks up information from small businesses that offer products for sale on its platform, then uses that information to run its own competing businesses. Apple forces entrepreneurs (and thereby consumers) to pay crushing commissions to use its App Store.” .
What they propose: Digital Consumer Protection Commission Act
It would create an independent, bipartisan regulator charged with licensing and policing the nation’s biggest tech companies, including Meta, Google and Amazon, to prevent online harm, promote free speech and competition, guard Americans’ privacy, and protect national security.
How it would help consumers? It would guarantee common-sense safeguards for everyone who uses tech platforms, including, but not limited to, giving families the right to protect their children from sexual exploitation, cyberbullying and harmful drugs.
“Our bill would set clear rules for tech companies and impose real consequences for companies that break the law. For the giant companies, anti-competitive practices — like exploiting market dominance, tying the sale of one product to another, charging customers different prices for the same product and preventing employees from working for competitors — would be prohibited. The bill would set a high bar for mergers and acquisitions by dominant Big Tech platforms and make it possible to block and reverse harmful deals.”
Furthermore
None of this should come as a surprise, for industry watchdogs, politicians and, especially technologists intimately familiar with the inner working of both Meta and the technology behind the platforms, have been sounding the alarm for years.
Additional reading:
Facebook (& Instagram) Papers:A treasure trove of internal Meta documents revealing how the social media giant “privately and meticulously tracked real-world harms exacerbated by its platforms, ignored warnings from its employees about the risks of their design decisions and exposed vulnerable communities around the world to a cocktail of dangerous content.”