Anti-monopoly advocates and liberals are enthused by the Federal Trade Commission’s decision to give itself more authority to create and enforce new rules that could hold Big Tech companies accountable for anti-competitive behavior, even without help from Congress.
The trade commission, which has broad authority over antitrust and consumer protection issues, will create a new group to strengthen current rules and create new ones, acting Chairwoman Rebecca Kelly Slaughter said in a statement Thursday.
For years, anti-monopolists and liberals who would like to see tech giants such as Amazon, Google, and Facebook held accountable for anti-competitive practices, privacy violations, and unfair acquisitions have called upon the trade commission to act more aggressively in taking on the tech companies as Congress remained slow and gridlocked on such issues. Now, with FTC’s new rule-making group and the Biden administration’s intent to pursue an aggressive tech regulatory agenda, they may finally get what they want.
“It’s a sign that the FTC is serious about structural regulatory changes to take on Big Tech,” said Ramesh Srinivasan, an information studies professor at UCLA and a progressive tech advocate. He said that some of the first few issues the rule-making group could consider tackling are how to incentivize small- and medium-size businesses to compete with the giants, disincentivizing large mergers and acquisitions by Big Tech companies, and ensuring platforms have better data privacy standards.
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Two other issues that the trade commission is likely to focus on are banning non-compete clauses for all workers, which Amazon and other companies have used to great effect, and banning exclusionary contracts between companies, like Google and Apple’s exclusive search deal, said Sandeep Vaheesan, legal director at the Open Markets Institute, an anti-monopoly think tank.
President Joe Biden has also appointed leading anti-monopolists and critics of Big Tech’s powers to key positions in his administration, such as Lina Khan for the FTC and Tim Wu heading up tech policy in the White House.
“Biden bringing Tim Wu and Lina Khan on board means the FTC will probably look at the business activities of Big Tech companies that are out of line and acting like a monopsony or a monopoly,” said Srinivasan.
Anti-monopolists say that they would prefer for Congress to pass new laws giving the trade commission additional powers to regulate tech companies, but in the absence of legislation, the FTC giving itself new authorities through the task force could be a helpful backup.
“The FTC should still keep asking for expanded rule-making from Congress because doing rule-making on its own is Plan B, that Congress has kind of forced it into,” said Eric Goldman, who heads the Santa Clara University High Tech Law Institute.
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Liberals say that they expect blowback from the tech giants for the trade commission’s new push.
“Whenever the number of stakeholders in the tech debate gets broader and goes beyond Congress, Big Tech doesn’t like it,” said Greg Guice, head of government affairs at open internet advocacy group Public Knowledge. “The FTC rule-making gives the public a direct way to weigh in on these important issues, which is to our benefit, but the tech companies will be angry and might try to block things.”
