Republicans divided on fight to take on Big Tech

Sarah Westwood

December 25, 07:00 AM December 25, 07:01 AM

Most Republicans readily agree they should use their forthcoming House majority to take on the so-called Big Tech companies that dominate everything from social media to online shopping.

But many disagree on how to do it.

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GOP lawmakers across the party’s ideological spectrum have clashed over which Big Tech overreach they consider the most offensive, in what order to tackle their policy priorities, and how to navigate the industry’s fierce opposition to regulatory changes that could curb its power.

Republicans have pledged to use their investigative abilities to examine the business practices of the largest technology platforms when they return to Washington in January. Their areas of interest are scattered enough that the Big Tech battle could end up dividing a GOP that is already facing even deeper rifts.

Here are the different pieces of the Republicans’ Big Tech agenda.

SECTION 230 REPEAL

Many Republicans, and even some Democrats, back at least modest reforms to Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act.

Some GOP lawmakers have pushed to scrap it altogether.

Section 230 shields social media platforms from legal liability for the content posted on their sites.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) recently laid out the Democrats’ argument in favor of overhauling the measure, and it could collide squarely with the Republican quest to limit censorship.

He said the rise in antisemitic content online should give lawmakers a reason to revisit a law that prevents social media platforms from facing responsibility for allowing such content to exist.

But Republicans have argued that social media companies hide behind Section 230 to moderate content on a partisan basis.

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) introduced a bill in 2019 that would strip social media companies of their Section 230 protections unless they agree to allow a third-party review of their content moderation practices to ensure they’re politically neutral.

Other Section 230 reform proposals, some of them bipartisan, would make less dramatic changes to the provision, including by creating exemptions for certain types of content or preserving the overall liability shield for social media companies while raising the standards those companies must meet to be in compliance with the law.

COMMON CARRIAGE

Some Republicans have proposed labeling Big Tech platforms as common carriers, which would subject them to laws that prevent discrimination against users.

Common carrier laws force services such as railroads and telephone networks to serve all customers equally. All companies must be permitted to ship goods on railroads under common carrier laws, for example, and railroad companies can’t show bias against types of products.

Conservative Justice Clarence Thomas suggested last year in an opinion that social media platforms should receive common carrier protections and the obligations that come with them.

Sen. Bill Hagerty (R-TN) introduced a bill last year that would regulate Twitter, Facebook, and other dominant social media platforms as common carriers.

The GOP argument in favor of common carriage for social media giants is that the reform would address conservative concerns about censorship under a legal framework that already exists.

SELF-PREFERENCING

Censorship is just one Big Tech behavior Republicans want to target when they gain more influence in Congress.

They also aim to go after self-preferencing, a dynamic that occurs when major commerce platforms, such as Amazon or Google, list their own products higher than other sellers’ products in search results. That gives the Big Tech platform an unfair advantage — particularly when, in Republicans’ view, the platform has gotten so big that consumers have few reasonable alternatives.

A bipartisan group of lawmakers this year pushed a bill that would stop self-preferencing, and the bill’s prospects for becoming law are good.

APP STORE ADJUSTMENTS

Legislation that some advocates pushed to pass just before Congress left for the holidays would stop major app stores, in particular Apple’s and Google’s, from limiting the ability of third-party app developers to reach customers who use their platforms.

One element of the proposal would stop app stores from requiring developers to use the Apple or Google payment system as a condition of getting listed in the store, for example.

Interest in the power of app stores grew in recent weeks when new Twitter owner Elon Musk said Apple had threatened to pull Twitter from the app store if Musk proceeded with plans to stop the platform’s aggressive content moderation policies.

TRUST BUSTERS

Some Republicans and Democrats have found common ground on the idea that a handful of Big Tech companies have gotten so large that competition in their markets is no longer fair.

Bipartisan interest in antitrust reforms for platforms such as Google and Amazon has grown on Capitol Hill in recent years, although those efforts have taken different forms.

Some have proposed limits on major technology corporations buying up smaller startups, and others have suggested breaking up existing corporations.

The tech industry has, perhaps unsurprisingly, fought aggressively against antitrust reforms, and Democrat-led efforts in this Congress to pass antitrust laws targeting Big Tech stalled.

SEE IT: Taylor Swift breaks silence, hammers TicketMaster for ticket sale blunders

Julia Johnson

November 18, 02:23 PM November 18, 02:23 PM

Taylor Swift broke her silence Friday on the botched presales for her tour, which led to the general sale being canceled altogether by TicketMaster.

“Well. It goes without saying that I’m extremely protective of my fans. We’ve been doing this for decades together and over the years, I’ve brought so many elements of my career in house,” she began in the statement posted to Instagram.

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“I’ve done this SPECIFICALLY to improve the quality of my fans’ experience by doing it myself with my team who care as much about my fans as I do. It’s really difficult for me to trust an outside entity with these relationships and loyalties, and excruciating for me to just watch mistakes happen with no recourse," Swift said.

She added that there were many reasons why the process was so difficult and that her team was working on how to avoid this scenario in the future. Swift did express gratitude for the more than 2 million fans who were able to secure tickets but lamented that the process was so grating.

"It really pisses me off that a lot of them feel like they went through several bear attacks to get them," the singer said.

On Thursday, Liberty Media CEO and Live Nation Chairman Greg Maffei told CNBC that the demand was unprecedented. He further pinned the blame on Swift for not having toured in years.

As a result of the fiasco, tens of thousands have penned letters to the Department of Justice, urging an antitrust investigation into TicketMaster. Several politicians have also called on the DOJ to investigate, citing ticketing problems for Swift's tour.

Conservative teams push for votes on a few anti-Huge Tech charges

Christopher Hutton

July 21, 07:00 AM July 21, 07:15 AM

A coalition of conservative companies is calling on Congress to vote for 3 antitrust bills in hopes of reining in Large Tech companies.

The coalition, led by the World-wide-web Accountability Project, known as in a Thursday letter for Congress to vote in favor of the American Innovation and Choice On the net Act, Open Application Markets Act, and State Antitrust Enforcement Location Act.

"Anticompetitive habits by these trillion-dollar businesses has extensive-ranging and devastating consequences for compact corporations and the American community at massive," the letter reads. "As the digital application market has develop into dominated by just a couple of large businesses, smaller corporations who endeavor to compete with their goods are totally at their mercy. As we have witnessed, these behemoths can speedily join forces to efficiently do away with their competitiveness by eliminating them from their platforms and chopping them off from their audiences."

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The coalition despatched the letter to Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), Residence Minority Chief Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), Senate The vast majority leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), and Home Minority Chief Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and specially named out "Big Tech's unbalanced enforcement of arbitrary articles moderation guidelines."

The letter was signed by the IAP, as very well as executives from GETTR, American Intellect, the Bull Moose Job, and the Claremont Institute Centre for the American Way of Lifestyle.

The letter notes the choice by Amazon, Apple, and Google to get rid of the option social community Parler from their app outlets briefly in 24 hrs as an case in point of anti-aggressive habits. The letter also mentioned the 14-working day suspension of Rep. Jim Banking institutions (R-IN) in Feb. 2022 for "specific misgendering or deadnaming of transgender people" and Twitter's final decision to censor the New York Submit's tale about Hunter Biden's laptop computer as examples of how the providers put into practice bans in accordance with their "ideological leanings."

The authors also observe Amazon's apply of preferring its own goods in excess of all those of its competitors, a observe that has drawn the focus of antitrust regulators in the United States and Europe. The company appears to be lowering the amount of non-public-label merchandise it sells on its market platform, in accordance to the Wall Avenue Journal.

The coalition pushes again on Facebook's and Google's statements that breaking them up is a "national stability hazard" and argues that they have been colluding with U.S. rivals, such as Russia and China.

The American Innovation and Alternative On line Act, filed by Sens. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) and Chuck Grassley (R-IA), would authorize the Federal Trade Commission and Division of Justice to obstacle significant tech platforms preferring their have solutions. Amazon has been vital of these procedures, arguing that they would lead to the stop of preferred providers like Amazon Primary free of charge shipping and delivery.

Other business teams have argued that the bill's phrasing is overly wide and would be extra harmful to individuals than initially intended.

The Open Application Markets Act, which moved out of the Senate Judiciary Committee in March 2022, would allow application builders to provide their solutions to people without having the specific limitations or transaction costs that application suppliers apply and let transactions within the app without having obtaining to go as a result of the platform.

The State Antitrust Enforcement Location Act would alter the legislation so that states have the same venue assortment rights as federal regulators and prevent the transfer of lawsuits involving a condition to multidistrict litigation.