Love the products, hate the companies — that’s the way many Americans think about Big Tech. Which is why it looked like a good bet when Congress convened in 2021 that Washington might finally rein in the companies that many believe have grown too big, too rich and too powerful — even as their products and services have become ever more indispensable to our lives. Here, it seemed, was the rare issue on which both Republicans and Democrats, House and Senate, could agree. In the end, however, Congress failed to act. And in that failure is a case study of how Congress has lost its ability to address the most pressing problems facing the country.
Forty-five House Republicans are urging the Supreme Court to uphold an injunction that could prevent White House officials from discussing controversial matters with personnel at social media platforms. The injunction, issued in September by the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, prohibits some government officials from attempting to “coerce or significantly encourage” platforms’ content moderation decisions. In a friend-of-the-court brief filed Friday, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and other lawmakers claim the injunction is justified, arguing that the Biden administration “repeatedly used government coercion to stifle public debate.”
Britain’s competition regulator plans to make Big Tech companies give their rivals greater access to data and limit them from promoting their own products under new powers it is due to receive from the government, it said on Thursday.
Sens. Richard Blumenthal and Marsha Blackburn cite a story on an Instagram whistleblower to push protective legislation.
House and Senate Democrats have introduced a bill that could take a bite out of Big Tech’s online advertising marketplace by banning co-called surveillance advertising. Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), one of the bill’s co-sponsors, made it clear that the bill was clearly aimed at hitting Big Tech in the wallet.
Google and the federal government will face off in a trial next week that could reshape how the tech giant is structured and the future of antitrust enforcement against tech platforms. The trial is kicking off nearly three years after the Department of Justice and a coalition of states’ attorneys general filed the complaint. The suit alleges Google has an anticompetitive monopoly over the search market.
Exclusives
Since Lina Khan became Federal Trade Commission chair in 2021, she’s challenged Meta, Microsoft, and Amazon, and that’s made her a lightning rod for controversy. WSJ breaks down the battles she’s picked and why she’s willing to lose.
Amazon, Google and Meta are among the companies that announced the new commitments on Friday as they race to outdo each other with versions of artificial intelligence.
The U.S. Supreme Court delivered tech companies a reprieve Thursday by rejecting one lawsuit alleging social media platforms should be held liable for enabling a lethal attack on a Turkish nightclub and tossing another case back to a lower court.Those moves, coming three months after the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the cases, preserve a law known as Section 230 that shields social media services from being held responsible for the material posted on their platforms.
A bipartisan group of U.S. senators introduced a bill on Thursday aimed at cutting Google and Facebook’s clout in online advertising, an early sign that lawmakers will press on with efforts to rein in Big Tech in the new congress.
California lawmakers this week are launching a plan to force digital giants like Facebook and Google to pay publishers for news content, taking a contentious global fight to the state level. Pictured: Assemblymember Buffy Wicks (D-Oakland) has led several state-level efforts targeting the tech giants. (Rich Pedroncelli/AP)
The outcome of a case in federal court could help decide whether the First Amendment is a barrier to virtually any government efforts to stifle disinformation.
President Joe Biden took Big Tech to task, and got in a shot at cable fees, in his State of the Union speech Tuesday night, with Big Tech getting the brunt of the criticism. “The idea that cable, internet and cellphone companies can charge you $200 or more if you decide to switch to another provider — give me a break,” he said during the part of his speech when he hammered various industries — “big pharma,” airlines — over what he called “junk fees.”
The past year of rising interest rates and falling stock prices has shaken Big Tech, along with the San Francisco Bay region it dominates. Now, tens of thousands of layoffs from Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook and dozens of other companies have made it clear: The golden age is over. Speeches about austerity have replaced the free-flowing stock grants and free sushi lunches.
The Justice Department is apparently giving broadcasters some help with one of their top Washington priorities — Big Tech’s dominance as an ad platform. As expected, the DOJ on Jan. 24 said it was filing an antitrust suit against one of the biggest of Big Tech — Google parent Alphabet — over its online ad practices, a move that could lead to Google divesting its ad business and aid TV stations in what the NAB Broadcasters has called Big Tech’s “stranglehold” on digital advertising and ad rates.
Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai, the parent company of Google, informed staff Friday at the Silicon Valley giant about the cuts in an email that was also posted on the company’s news blog. It’s one of the company’s biggest-ever round of layoffs and adds to tens of thousands of other job losses recently announced by Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook parent Meta and other tech companies as they tighten their belts amid a darkening outlook for the industry. Just this month, there have been at least 48,000 job cuts announced by major companies in the sector.
President Biden pushed for sweeping reforms to target tech giants through data privacy, competition and content moderation law updates in a Wall Street Journal op-ed published Wednesday. Biden’s op-ed is light on details and falls short of backing specific policy proposals, but throws the president’s weight behind several hot-button issues Big Tech critics on both sides of the aisle have raised.
Amazon is planning to lay off more than 18,000 employees, adding to a massive round of job cuts first announced last year, the tech giant said Wednesday, after more than 100,000 employees of large U.S. corporations lost their jobs in 2022 amid growing recession fears.
With House Republicans preparing to take over the committee gavels as soon as Rep. Kevin McCarthy (or someone else) is voted to the speaker’s gavel, the House Energy & Commerce Committee is signaling that holding the “destructive” force of Big Tech to account will be a priority.
The tech giant has so far taken steps to streamline without mass layoffs, but employees are girding for deeper cuts.
NetChoice, whose members include some of the biggest of Big Tech — Amazon, Google, Meta (Facebook) — is behind a TV ad that sounds and looks more like a Donald Trump attack on his political opponents and the coverage he receives in the media, rather than leading-edge online companies more often allied with the liberals the ad is attacking. The association has been fighting hard against the Journalism Competition & Preservation Act (JCPA), which is designed to give creators of original news content, like local broadcasters, more leverage over compensation for their content’s re-use online.
The Computer & Communications Industry Association, which represents Big Tech, says that free speech will be increasingly under attack from state legislatures that, after the midterms, will be controlled by one party. Both Democrats and Republicans are concerned about edge provider content moderation, though they disagree on the problem and the solution.
The e-commerce giant, which will shed roughly 10,000 positions as soon as this week, would become the latest big tech company to slash its workforce.
Hiring the best, the brightest and the highest number of employees was a badge of honor at tech companies. Not anymore as layoffs surge.
Big Tech companies took a heavy beating last week, to the tune of more than $255 billion in lost market capitalization that’s helped make a bad year even worse for the once-beloved sector. The five tech giants that posted results have now lost a combined $3 trillion in market cap on the year, according to Dow Jones Market Data, showing that Big Tech isn’t immune to the macroeconomic storm sweeping up the broader stock market.
The House on Thursday passed a package of antitrust bills aimed at boosting antitrust enforcers’ ability to take on powerful tech firms in a 242-184 vote that split both parties. Thirty-nine Republicans joined most Democrats in voting for the bills.
RAISING THE BARR
Why We Need The JCPA Now
The Big Tech behemoths are squeezing local media for content, controlling the algorithms that reach broad digital audiences, limiting or denying monetization and withholding data, which in turn control who can see the stories we are working so hard to tell. The Journalism Competition and Preservation Act, which enjoys rare bipartisan support in Washington, is how local media need to fight back.
TVN’S FRONT OFFICE BY JOE ANNOTTI
The Newsrooms Vs. The Monopsony
Two legislative bills that stand to protect newspapers from Big Tech’s power to dominate advertising currently hang in the balance. Here’s a closer look at why they were written, where they stand today, why they’re imperative to the future of the already-shaken newspaper industry — and why the midterm elections may hold the key to newsrooms’ ultimate survival.
Big Tech is beating up on broadcast consolidation as it pushes back on a bill that would give broadcasters and other original news creators an antitrust exemption to negotiate with the tech giants that leverage that original content online. The Computer and Communications Industry Association issued a pull-no-punches statement — the term “cartel” was used multiple times — following the Senate Judiciary Committee’s favorable referral of the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act (S. 673) to the Senate for a vote.
State attorneys general are leading efforts to crack down on the power of big technology firms, as highlighted by California’s suit filed last week against Amazon and a Texas-led coalition’s measured win in its fight against Google. The cases are just two in a long line of state-led efforts to rein in the power of tech giants that are showcasing the bipartisan angst at Big Tech and momentum on the state level to take on the industry’s most dominant companies while congressional efforts to do so are stalled.
Two hours into its Thursday markup, Republicans inserted provisions designed to limit the platforms’ abilities to moderate content, over the objections of lead sponsor Sen. Amy Klobuchar, who then withdrew the bill.
The Federal Trade Commission announced the initiative Thursday, seeking public comment on the effects of companies’ data collection and the potential benefit of new rules to protect consumers’ privacy. The FTC defines commercial surveillance as “the business of collecting, analyzing and profiting from information about people.”
Tech companies are slowing their frenetic hiring, but a combination of dominance and diversity is turning out to be — yet again — an overwhelming asset.
Competing for rights to games from the NFL and other leagues could be hard for broadcast and cable companies that “aren’t playing by the same financial rules.” The tech companies’ interest is a thrill for sports leagues and a terror for media companies that fear competition from rivals that collect tens of billions of dollars from dominant positions in other businesses. Last year, sports accounted for 95 of the 100 most viewed programs on television.
Lobbying both for and against legislation to crack down on U.S. tech giants is intensifying as the Senate enters a critical month for the antitrust bills. All eyes are on Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), who will need to decide whether to prioritize measures to regulate Google, Apple, Amazon and Meta over other key bills prior to the August recess.
Hiring freezes and layoffs are hitting the tech sector as Silicon Valley prepares for a predicted recession. The hiring impacts are hitting companies of all sizes across tech, from industry giants to more nascent startups, signaling that the industry’s growth is slowing amid rising interest rates and surging inflation.
Facing a multimillion-dollar TV ad campaign by Big Tech to try and stop their online competition bill, sponsors of the American Innovation and Choice Online Act said they will not be thwarted by a campaign they assert is full of lies and disinformation. But the legislators also suggested the campaign may be working since the bill has yet to make it to the floor after a year of work refining the bill with input from stakeholders.
