The Technology 202: Here’s where Republicans and Democrats might work together to rein in Silicon Valley

His tough rhetoric about Silicon Valley sounded very similar to liberal Democrats in Congress. “There seems to be a certain arrogance to the way these companies operate,” Buck said at an antitrust hearing yesterday. “Apple, Google, Facebook and Amazon have reached monopoly status, and their behavior won’t change until Congress acts, the enforcement agencies do their job, and the courts move quickly to rein in their predatory conduct.” 

Though Republicans and Democrats broadly agree tech companies have too much power and it’s time to regulate them, they’ve largely struggled to find consensus in how to craft legislation. That’s thwarted efforts to pass privacy legislation or regulate social media companies so far. 

Rep. David Cicilline (D-R.I.), the chair of the House Judiciary antitrust subcommittee, told me in a recent interview that he wants to initially focus on areas with bipartisan support as he plans to introduce legislation soon that would address the anticompetitive tactics House investigators say they found in their months-long probe into power in Silicon Valley. 

Here are key areas where Buck sees a path forward for Democrats and Republicans to work together:

More robust enforcement of antitrust laws. 

“We need personnel at these agencies who are willing to bring the difficult cases,” Buck said. 

Buck pointed to a recent Politico report, which detailed how the Federal Trade Commission during the Obama administration fumbled an opportunity to bring an antitrust case against Google, based on inaccurate assumptions where the future of Internet search was heading. 

He said he’s willing to consider greater funding for the agencies tasked with antitrust enforcement, the Justice Department and FTC. Democrats in Congress also have called for such a boost. However he warned that any increased funding needed to come with oversight to ensure they’re not repeating the mistakes the FTC made in 2013. 

“We aren’t making more taxpayer money available so this kind of dilatory behavior by government bureaucrats can continue,” Buck said. 

Proposals to make it easier for state attorneys general to bring antitrust cases against tech giants. 

Following years of inaction in Washington, states are increasingly playing a key role in efforts to crack down on the industry’s power. State attorneys general across the country have led their own investigations into tech companies’ business practices and brought lawsuits against Facebook and Google, which could result in major changes to the tech companies business models. 

Yet Buck is concerned that these efforts could be hampered because the existing system allows companies to try to move lawsuits to districts that might be more favorable to them. He’s proposing lawmakers find a way to ensure state attorneys general can select the venue when they bring a monopoly case, much like the federal government. 

Making it more difficult for tech giants to acquire rising competitors.  

Buck said that Silicon Valley is broken, and tech companies on acquisition sprees “are whales that are just inhaling the start-up plankton.” 

He thinks that there aren’t enough guardrails to prevent tech giants from simply buying up competitors, which is critical as the lawsuits against Facebook zero in on the company’s previous purchases of Instagram and WhatsApp. And he says tech companies have changed little about their acquisition habits in light of the recent political scrutiny, citing Google’s recent purchase of the smartwatch company FitBit. 

In light of these concerns, he thinks changes need to be made to make it more difficult for large tech titans to scoop up smaller rivals. 

He’s additionally proposing efforts to ensure that regulators are looking beyond simply the price of services when they’re considering whether a merger would harm consumers. He and other advocates for reform in Silicon Valley have warned that’s an insufficient standard for tech deals, because many of the services they offer are free to consumers in exchange for the wide swaths of data they collect. 

Yet Buck diverges with some Democrats on the scope of antitrust reform. 

Of course, partisan divisions over antitrust reform persist. Buck says that he does not support reforms to antitrust law that would have implications beyond the tech industry. That puts him directly at odds with Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), who says that antitrust laws need to be reformed to address concentration throughout the economy. 

“The proposals I am supporting are limited solely to Big Tech monopoly platforms,” Buck said. 

Officials are forcing the Microsoft-owned company, which has historically complied with China’s Internet rules to operate in the country, to conduct a self-evaluation and file a report with the Cyberspace Administration of China, the New York Times’s Paul Mozur, Raymond Zhong and Steve Lohr report. User sign-ups in China will be suspended for 30 days, a hit for the social media company, which is the only major American social network currently allowed to operate within the country.

The impetus for the move is not clear, though the regulator said it found offensive posts when Chinese lawmakers held their annual National People’s Congress meeting.

Adding to tensions between Microsoft and China, LinkedIn’s announcement that it had “temporarily” paused new sign-ups in China came on March 9, days after Microsoft said a group of Chinese hackers had exploited flaws in its software. 

An executive at Instagram, which is owned by Facebook, said in an internal company post that it has “identified youth work as a priority,” BuzzFeed News’s Ryan Mac and Craig Silverman report. Yet the new app is already raising safety and privacy concerns, just days after it announced moves to curb grooming and other exploitation of children on the platform. 

“Increasingly kids are asking their parents if they can join apps that help them keep up with their friends,” Joe Osborne, a Facebook spokesman, told Bloomberg. Osborne also noted that the company is “working on building additional products” that are “suitable for kids, managed by parents. We’re exploring bringing a parent-controlled experience to Instagram to help kids keep up with their friends, discover new hobbies and interests, and more.”

Some have raised alarms about the project, however. Priya Kumar, a PhD candidate at the University of Maryland who researches social media’s effects on families, told BuzzFeed that the app could reel young users in and teach them that relationships are meant to be “monetized.”

The company is exploring how to translate nerve movements into gesture controls for devices, Dalvin Brown reports. The announcement underscores how Facebook continues to forge ahead in emerging technologies as its business model and privacy practices are under intense scrutiny around the world. 

“We’re developing natural, intuitive ways to interact with always-available AR glasses because we believe this will transform the way we connect with people near and far,” Facebook said in a blog post.

Facebook two years ago bought CTRL-Labs, a start-up that was working on a wristband to turn brain impulses into computer input. 

Facebook says it is still in the early phases of research for the project and a consumer product is years away. Facebook insists that data privacy is a top concern for the project. Data, according to the company, would just be stored on the device and not sent to the cloud. Facebook said the only information that is meant to be collected is the intent to move your hand.

Facebook skeptics commented on the company’s wristband announcement. Our colleague, technology columnist Geoffrey A. Fowler:

New York Times technology columnist Kevin Roose:

Others, like researcher Jane Manchun Wong, emphasized its possibilities:

• Instacart has hired Max Eulenstein, a senior product leader at Instagram, to run the design of its app.
• Cynthia Deitle, a former unit chief of the FBI’s civil rights unit, has joined Facebook as the company’s director and associate counsel for civil rights. 
• President Biden is expected to nominate former senator Bill Nelson as NASA administrator.
• Forbes-Tate has registered to lobby for the Coalition for App Fairness, a group of app developers who have challenged Apple and Google’s app stores, effective Feb. 12. The firm plans to lobby on antitrust legislation.

• The House Energy and Commerce Committee holds a hearing on infrastructure legislation on March 22 at 11 a.m.
• D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Douglas Ginsburg speaks at a NetChoice event on antitrust and the Consumer Welfare Standard on March 22 at noon.
• The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace hosts an event on women who research influence operations on March 23 at 9:30 a.m. 
• Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Google CEO Sundar Pichai and Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey testify on misinformation before the House Energy and Commerce Committee on March 25.