President Biden called for broad reforms to target internet companies through data privacy, competitiveness, and content moderation law improvements.
The president’s support is given to a number of controversial topics cited by Big Tech critics on all sides of the political spectrum in Biden’s op-ed, despite its lack of specifics and lack of support for particular policy recommendations.
For Congress to hold Big Tech accountable, there must be bipartisan action. Creating committees has been a topic of much discussion. The moment has come to act on the words and complete projects, stated Biden.
Biden stated that the country needs “strong federal protections for Americans’ privacy” as part of his campaign.
As demonstrated by a plan that was approved by both parties last year after it emerged from the House Energy and Commerce Committee, there is bipartisan support in Congress for a comprehensive federal data privacy law. The American Data Privacy and Protection Act (ADPPA), however, which was an advanced idea, still faces several obstacles. Democrats from states with strict privacy protections, primarily California, have opposed the bill because it would violate their state laws.
The majority of Republicans, however, continue to insist that federal preemption is essential to their support for federal privacy law.
Biden called for action to “bring more competition back to the tech sector”.
He said that once tech platforms reach a certain size, many develop strategies to promote their own products at the cost of their competitors—or charge competitors a premium to sell on their platform.
There was a bipartisan push for antitrust reform, but two important bills that supporters backed, including one that would have prevented businesses from self-praising their own goods and services, fell short of passage.
The current House GOP leaders have opposed that legislation, making it less likely that it will be passed in the next two years.
House Republicans have stated that they would prefer to concentrate on content filtering, which was another issue mentioned by Biden.
The president renewed his request for Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, a controversial clause that shields businesses from liability for third-party content posted on their websites.
Although there is strong debate about how to move forward, there is bipartisan support for reforming that clause.
Republicans claim that the clause enables businesses to restrict content with an anti-conservative bias, while Democrats claim that it forces digital companies to host an excessive amount of hate speech and damaging falsehoods.
