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Democrats United States Politics

Democrats Plan To Bombard Big Tech With Series of Antitrust Bills (axios.com) 99

The powerful Democrat overseeing antitrust legislation wants to hit Big Tech with the legislative equivalent of a swarm of drones rather than a single, hulking battleship that would be simpler to defeat. From a report: In an interview with Axios on Sunday, Rep. David Cicilline (D-R.I.) said he didn't want to give the major technology companies and their armies of lobbyists the easy target of a massive antitrust bill. Instead, in his role running the House Judiciary Committee's antitrust panel, he plans to craft a series of smaller bills -- perhaps 10 or more -- that will be ready in May.

The way Cicilline sees it, this small-target strategy achieves two goals: He has a better chance of finding common ground between Democrats and Republicans on more narrowly targeted issues. And he makes it harder for Amazon, Facebook, Apple and Google to mobilize quickly against reforms they don't like. "If you look at the way these technology companies have staffed up with their lobbying and the money they're investing in Washington, it's designed ... to prevent any changes to the current ecosystem that benefits them enormously," Cicilline told Axios. "They have literally billions and billions and billions of reasons to try to protect the current system because it produces ... profits not seen on planet Earth." Recognizing this reality, Cicilline said his intention is to use this range of bills to advance all the recommendations in his panel's 450-page investigation into competition in the digital marketplace.

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Democrats Plan To Bombard Big Tech With Series of Antitrust Bills

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  • Well... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Freischutz ( 4776131 ) on Monday March 22, 2021 @10:48AM (#61185480)
    I suppose this means the Republicans can cheer up, the 'well known liberal bias' of big tech is about to spontaneously morph into the 'well known conservative bias' of big tech like a vampire in a cheap horror film morphing into a bat in a puff of smoke.
    • I suppose this means the Republicans can cheer up, the 'well known liberal bias' of big tech is about to spontaneously morph into the 'well known conservative bias' of big tech like a vampire in a cheap horror film morphing into a bat in a puff of smoke.

      Interesting take ... a more straightforward one might be "big tech wasn't quite obedient enough, let's be explicit in our control".

      • Re:Well... (Score:4, Informative)

        by Puls4r ( 724907 ) on Monday March 22, 2021 @01:05PM (#61185944)
        Why don't you take a look at the news article two up from this one, where Amazon is using their unique position to put their own suppliers out of business while co-opting their products with cheap knock-offs.

        Moves like that deserve anti-trust, and there are so many examples of Amazon doing this that they are gonna get their asses kicked for it. Not that it will matter. A one time fine that amounts to nothing for amazon is hardly going to make them blink an eye.
  • Net Neutrality, anti-monopoly, and privacy are good!
    • Well, and anti-monopoly you may be about to get.

      No special reason to believe that you'll get Net Neutrality or privacy. It's not like the D's are especially fond of either, they just get excited about different examples of privacy. And define Net Neutrality to favour them, rather than the way the R's define Net Neutrality (which definition favours the R's).

      • But we did get good regulation with Tom Wheeler at the head of the FCC during the Obama admin. It wasn't everything but it was a far cry better than what we had gotten with Ajit Pai in charge.

        If Jessica Rosenworcel is confirmed to be the actual commissioner she has already voiced support for NN so while not "great" things under the Democrats could get "better".

  • Stephen A Douglas would be proud. This'll be just about as effective.
  • If you want to build trust around the effort vow to back off the push for censorship and reinstate the executive order which required funds collected from federal lawsuits either go to the victims or government. Having revoked that order and then immediately started lawsuits against the cash cow tech giants is not exactly a trustworthy move.
  • to bombard them with a lot of campaign contributions and research grants.

    • Word.
      I was going to mention extortion seems to be the real goal of too many proposed laws/bills.
      Unfortunatly too many here take the view that if someone points out the obvious then you are a saint or satan depending on the party introducing the extortion, I mean bill.
      THAT is unfortunate, it's sad that the impacts of these bills are being judged via emotion here (by many, not all) rather than by their content.
      I'm just asking for a little less political hyperbole here, this stuff matters.
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • We donated tons to you! We silenced your political opponents before an election! What more do yiu want from us?!?!?

    "Yes, but what have you done for us lately?"

  • Break those big monopolistic tech giants into smaller entities. Now you have more enemies.

    WhatCouldPossiblyGoWrong

  • Look at what happened with GDPR in Europe. Granted it was a step in the right direction, however given the amount of new regulation, many smaller companies could not keep up:
    https://money.cnn.com/2018/05/... [cnn.com]
    https://www.trendmicro.com/vin... [trendmicro.com]
    https://www.theguardian.com/te... [theguardian.com]

    Look at any list that of GDPR affected companies. Not a single "big tech" service would be there. They can spend "pocket money" (i.e.: a few million dollars) on compliance, and make some lawyers happy. However small

  • Building search and social media into the fabric of internet hardware and protocols will undermine Google and Facebook and democratise the internet.

  • There's a ton of big non-Microsoft tech out there. Move everything to Microsoft. It's the right thing to do.
  • This is so the Democrats can exert control over them. Any attempts by future Republican governments to wind back these controls will be widely reported as "Republicans want Neo Nazi White Supremacists to take over social media again!".

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