How seriously does Congress treat its ban-the-billionaires spectacle in the House antitrust committee? Well, ranking member Jim Sensenbrenner decided to ask Mark Zuckerberg why Donald Trump Jr.’s account was partially restricted by Twitter.
If you’re under the age of 50, you know this is nuts because Zuckerberg is the CEO and founder of Facebook, not Twitter. But the average member of congress is almost 60, and the utter buffoonery on display from both Judiciary Democrats and Republicans demonstrates how incapable Congress is of regulating Big Tech.
Nearly a quarter century after preeminent conservative economist Milton Friedman warned that Silicon Valley begging the Justice Department to take anti-trust measures against Microsoft would prove to be business “suicide,” Republicans and Democrats have joined forces to target private tech companies, and Wednesday’s hearing proved not just how misguided their crusade is but also how utterly incompetent their execution would be.
Save for a handful of questions about Google’s collusion with the Chinese Communist Party with Project Dragonfly and a few others about regulatory capture, the hearing was characterized by the House’s total lack of understanding of technological and economic reality — as well as being hijacked by politicians keen on scoring a campaign ad out of “questioning.”
Jim Jordan spent the entirety of his speaking time focusing on bias against conservatives. After using up his speaking time, he feuded with Rep. Mary Scanlon. He responded to a simple request to put his mask back on as follows: “You wanna talk about masks? What about unmasking Michael Flynn?”
Very serious indeed.
On the Left, the supposed antitrust crusade spent more time questioning Mark Zuckerberg about not policing users’ speech than asking Google about China. Multiple hours passed before Jeff Bezos was even asked a single question. When Bezos was finally questioned, he got hard-hitting questions and not at all selfish complaints like, “A lot of people want to know when HBO Max will be available on your Fire device.” Brutal.
Big Tech and plenty of multibillion-dollar corporations massively threaten national security and subvert American interests by colluding with the CCP, and Congress should hold those organizations’ feet to the fire. But instead, we were subject to partisan drivel and rank disdain of entrepreneurship. If Congress doesn’t even know what platform it’s talking about or how email filters work, maybe it shouldn’t be trying to control companies built from the ground up by job creators.
