He said he wants to see quickly crimped the social media companies’ long-held legal protections for speech on their platforms.
But if Biden decides to pursue major legislation to overhaul the laws governing tech competition, he’ll have to navigate a tricky congressional and political landscape.Democratic lawmakers in the House, after a sweeping investigation by a Judiciary Committee panel, called last month for Congress to rein in Big Tech, possibly forcing the giants to break up their businesses while making it harder for them to acquire others and imposing new rules to safeguard competition.Legislation on the tech industry could be one area of possible agreement.
Republican lawmakers are likely to hang together in opposing fundamental changes to the tech industry, which also could affect smaller companies, while Democrats could be pulled in different directions.
The social media companies’ CEOs rebuffed accusations of anti-conservative bias at a Senate hearing last month and promised to aggressively defend their platforms from being used to sow chaos in the Nov.