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**JULY 28, 2023**

Kuttner on TAP

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**** The Alliance to Rein In Big Tech

Give the platform monopolies credit for one thing. They are helping to
create new areas of bipartisanship.

Progressive Democrats are going after monopoly platforms like Google,
Apple, and Facebook because they invade privacy, take no responsibility
for content, pervert trade policy to undermine domestic safeguards, and
use their privileged knowledge to compete against outside vendors on
their platforms. But many Republicans, who are usually anti-regulation,
are also against Big Tech.

Why? Several reasons, both opportunistic and principled. Silicon Valley
tends to donate to Democrats. The monopolies also promote perverse forms
of supposed social liberalism via social media, as well as screw
independent and smaller businesses. And fake news is beginning to
backfire on right as well as left.

Who said this?: "I have heard too many stories from families who feel
helpless in the face of Big Tech. Stories about children being bullied
to the point of committing suicide. Human trafficking. Exploitation of
minors. All the while the social media platforms look the other way."

That would be Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham. This week, Graham
co-sponsored the Digital Consumer Protection Commission Act
<[link removed]>
with Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren.

Recognizing that responsibility for regulating the platform monopolies
is fragmented and ineffective,

****their bill would create a new regulatory agency to police the
biggest tech platforms, protect consumers, promote competition, secure
privacy, guard national security, and prevent harm online. Dominant
digital platforms would be required to get licenses from the government
to operate, as broadcasters currently do, and would lose their licenses
for repeated violations of law.

The bill would also require transparent terms of service and ban
monopolistic tactics such as self-preferencing. It would include an
outright prohibition on conflicts of interest such as Amazon both owning
the marketplace and competing as a vendor on its platform-reflecting
long-standing common-carrier principles. The new commission would work
closely with the Federal Trade Commission and the Antitrust Division of
the Justice Department to review market power and proposed acquisitions,
as well as past ones.

It would have extensive protections of privacy for users. Dominant
platforms would also be prohibited from having computer operations in
countries that posed security risks.

To review these mandates is to appreciate all that is problematic about
Big Tech. As Warren and Graham wrote in a recent op-ed
<[link removed]>
in

**The New York Times**, "Americans deserve to know how their data is
collected and used and to control who can see it. They deserve the
freedom to opt out of targeted advertising. And they deserve the right
to go online without, say, some A.I. tool's algorithm
<[link removed]>
denying them a loan based on their race or politics."

This improbable alliance has one other huge benefit. Opponents of Trump
and Trumpism have hoped that they can rally traditional Republicans as a
political counterweight. This has gone nowhere, because the hardcore
Trump base intimidates the rest of the electoral field. But maybe there
is another path.

As the common qualms about Big Tech suggest, there are areas where
libertarian conservative values and progressive values converge. The
tendency of rampant capitalism to crowd out everything else that matters
is one of them.

The road back from Trumpism may be an indirect one-finding our way
back to values we have in common as Americans and creating coalitions of
social decency.

______________________________________________________________________

P.S.: prospect.org <[link removed]> today has a terrific medley
of pieces on

**Oppenheime**r and

**Barbie**. Do check it out.

~ ROBERT KUTTNER

To receive this newsletter directly in your inbox, click here to
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Barbenheimer Reveals the Drastic Choices of Hollywood Executives
<[link removed]>
The big opening weekend contrasts with everything the studios have been
doing for the last couple of decades. BY DAVID DAYEN

Atomic Frankenstein
<[link removed]>
'Oppenheimer' and the anguish of creative destruction BY R. HOWARD
BLOCH & ELLEN HANDLER SPITZ

The Joy of Being a Girl
<[link removed]>
'Barbie' captures those thoughts that are difficult for women to
express. BY RAMENDA CYRUS

Why 'Oppenheimer' Matters
<[link removed]>
The father of the atomic bomb still speaks to the danger of complacency.
BY JONATHAN STEVENSON

What's at Stake in the Hollywood Writers' Strike
<[link removed]>
Streaming has given the studios one more way to exploit writers-and
the writers are pushing back. BY CATHERINE L. FISK

 

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