Republicans & Big Tech: Keep Eyes on the Ball

Amid the headline-grabbing debates over abortion, inflation, and Ukraine, two significant Big Tech bills are quietly making their way through Congress with bipartisan support. The first, the Open App Markets Act (OAMA) — a bill that would bar large app stores from requiring that developers use the platform’s payment system — was voted out of the Senate Judiciary Committee by a margin of 20–2 in February. The American Choice and Innovation Online Act (ACIOA), which would prohibit Silicon Valley powerhouses from “self-preferencing” — i.e., giving preferential treatment to their own services on their distribution platforms — advanced out of committee by a margin of 16–6 just a few weeks prior. That bill, CNBC reported earlier this month, “is just a few steps away from becoming federal law”:

I defended the ACIOA when it was voted out of committee earlier this year, arguing that the conservative criticisms of the bill’s “socialist” provisions were misguided. While some libertarian-minded skeptics slammed the legislation for what they perceived to be an expansion of the power of the federal bureaucracy, “Big Tech already is working hand-in-hand with progressive technocrats,” I wrote. As a general matter, I tend to be more bullish on public-policy interventions in Silicon Valley than some of my colleagues: I’ve advocated for reforming Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act, for example — the controversial provision that protects powerful Internet platforms from being held liable for the content that users post on their forums — “to require more free-speech protections for users.” In October, I :

Amid the headline-grabbing debates over abortion, inflation, and Ukraine, two significant Big Tech bills are quietly making their way through Congress with bipartisan support. The first, the Open App Markets Act (OAMA) — a bill that would bar large app stores from requiring that developers use the platform’s payment system — was voted out of the Senate Judiciary Committee by a margin of 20–2 in February. The American Choice and Innovation Online Act (ACIOA), which would prohibit Silicon Valley powerhouses from “self-preferencing” — i.e., giving preferential treatment to their own services on their distribution platforms — advanced out of committee by a margin of 16–6 just a few weeks prior. That bill, CNBC reported earlier this month, “is just a few steps away from becoming federal law”:

I defended the ACIOA when it was voted out of committee earlier this year, arguing that the conservative criticisms of the bill’s “socialist” provisions were misguided. While some libertarian-minded skeptics slammed the legislation for what they perceived to be an expansion of the power of the federal bureaucracy, “Big Tech already is working hand-in-hand with progressive technocrats,” I wrote. As a general matter, I tend to be more bullish on public-policy interventions in Silicon Valley than some of my colleagues: I’ve advocated for reforming Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act, for example — the controversial provision that protects powerful Internet platforms from being held liable for the content that users post on their forums — “to require more free-speech protections for users.” In October, I wrote: