Congress is calling on President Joe Biden to join the effort for stronger regulations on social media and other internet platforms.
A bipartisan group of lawmakers on Capitol Hill is crafting measures that deal with the companies’ data-collection policies, accountability for content posted on social media, online privacy, children’s safety, and the market dominance of just a few players.
Big Tech companies oppose what they fear will be excessive regulation while Republicans and Democrats fight over partisan differences. For the most part, Democrats seek tight regulations that rein in harmful content while the GOP has sought a more hands-off approach fearing restriction of free speech.
“The key is whether Biden personally gets involved and prioritizes passage,” the Washington Research Group (WRG), the global investment bank, told The Wall Street Journal.
WRG said a measure with the president’s support has a 65% chance of passage compared to 40% if Biden fails to back a proposal.
It’s unclear how the WRG arrived at that conclusion given that the most recent Gallup poll conducted from Dec. 1 to 16 showed Biden with a 43% approval rate among voters, while 51% disapproved of him and 6% had no opinion. The numbers reflect the poll conducted in September after the final withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan.
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All that could change after the midterm elections in 2022 when Republicans could take control of the House or Senate, sending policy priorities in a different direction.
While the White House put much of its energy in passage of the $1 trillion infrastructure spending plan, and Build Back Better, the $2 trillion education, healthcare and climate proposal, it has paid little attention to the Big Tech legislation that is still being crafted.
In response to an inquiry from the WSJ, a White House official noted that the President has been a longtime supporter of several Big Tech regulation measures including amending Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (CDA) of 1996, the sweeping protection of expression on the internet.
The spokesman noted, “Biden has long said tech platforms must be held accountable for harms that they cause and has been a strong supporter of fundamental reforms to achieve that goal.” Privacy and antitrust reforms, he said, as well as more transparency, should also be on the table as the large platforms’ business models and the incentives are addressed.
In addition, the official said the president has asked the Federal Trade Commission to address unfair data collection and surveillance practices by these large tech companies.
While the debate rages, one thing is clear: consumers like these companies.
Facebook, now Meta, owns four of the biggest social media platforms including WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger and Instagram, with more than 1 billion monthly active users each, according to Statista. In the third quarter, Facebook reported that 3.6 billion people used at least one of its services on a monthly basis, 2.8 billion on a daily basis.
Tech companies are not standing on the sidelines. They are fighting back and reminding lawmakers of their importance in the economy.
In its Dec. 21 announcement that it would create 2,000 jobs in Austin, Texas, Amazon noted that since 2010, the eCommerce company has created more than 70,000 full- and part-time jobs in Texas and invested more than $29 billion statewide, including infrastructure from fulfillment centers, Whole Foods Markets, and three tech hubs. These investments alone, Amazon said, have contributed $34 billion to the Texas economy and have supported 136,000 indirect jobs from construction to positions in logistics and professional services.
With nearly 1.5 million employees across the globe, Amazon is only the second U.S. company to employ more than a million people, not including McDonald’s franchise employees, Statista reported. Since there’s no end in sight to its growth, Amazon could grab the No. 1 spot.
In its most recent economic impact report, Google said it was responsible for $426 billion in economic activity in 2020 via Google Search, Google Play, YouTube, and Google advertising tools; helped provide economic activity for more than 2 million American businesses, nonprofits, publishers, creators, and developers.
Google also said that in every month of 2020, Google helped drive more than 2 billion direct connections, including phone calls, requests for directions, messages, bookings, and reviews for American businesses; and more than 17 million American businesses received requests for directions, phone calls, bookings, reviews and other direct connections to their customers from Google.
