For Tech Companies, Election-Year Politics May Limit New Regulation -- Journal Report
January 19 2020 - 2:56PM
Dow Jones News
By Sarah E. Needleman
The U.S. electoral calendar will likely lead to an escalation in
Washington's criticism of big tech companies this year.
But politics could delay any major U.S. regulatory
decision-making until after the elections are over, say legal,
policy and tech experts.
Tensions between Washington and Silicon Valley mushroomed in
2019, with investigations, Congressional hearings and a mounting
drumbeat of recriminations. The Federal Trade Commission and the
Justice Department launched separate antitrust investigations into
Facebook Inc., Google, Amazon.com Inc. and Apple Inc., probing the
extent of their control over internet search, social media and
online commerce.
Several Democrats running for president have targeted Big Tech
for breakups or other severe changes -- a rallying cry that could
well increase as the November vote draws nearer. Lawmakers from
both parties last year also began working on bills aimed at
strengthening individuals' ability to control their data collected
by tech giants.
At the same time, the current partisan divide, exacerbated by
the presidential election, makes it hard to imagine meaningful
rules on the tech industry coming out of Washington this year --
especially because the two parties don't share all the same
grievances or agree on what kind of regulatory role the government
should play.
"There's a lot of anger channeled at the tech platforms, but for
different and contradictory reasons," says Nathaniel Persily, a
Stanford University law professor and co-director of the California
school's Cyber Policy Center.
At Wedbush Securities Inc., analyst Dan Ives thinks the
companies are likely to adopt modest, self-imposed changes to show
goodwill and to bolster their argument that there is no need for a
costly courtroom battle or stricter antitrust laws.
"The tech stalwarts are going to try to play nice in the
sandbox, but they also have their boxing gloves on," Mr. Ives
says.
One way Facebook and Alphabet Inc.'s Google could score points
with federal regulators this year is to demonstrate that they have
learned from the mistakes they made during the 2016 election with
regard to the spread of disinformation on their platforms, says
Adam Segal, director of the digital and cyberspace policy program
at the Council on Foreign Relations.
"They need to convince people it is a problem that can be
addressed without changing their business models," Mr. Segal says.
"If can they garner some goodwill, it could deflate some of those
attacks on their business practices."
Facebook, Google and other social-networking companies have
already taken some steps, hiring more staff and deploying
machine-learning technology to better identify and prevent false or
misleading content from appearing. But researchers say that such
efforts need to be amplified and that the companies should share
more data with experts working to develop new detection
methods.
Apple and Amazon, meanwhile, are being probed by antitrust
investigators over whether they sell products and services in ways
that are unfair to consumers and smaller businesses. For example,
regulators want to know if the companies are listing their own apps
or goods in search results above those from third parties, even
though their items may not be as relevant or rated as highly as
others -- behavior the companies have denied.
Regulators are more worried about how the social-media platforms
handle user data, because that is a newer issue with implications
not yet fully understood, according to April Doss, a former
intelligence lawyer at the National Security Agency and now a
partner at Saul Ewing Arnstein & Lehr LLP.
"The concerns for small tech have been out there for years," she
says. "What seems to have really shifted with antitrust is the
added privacy component."
Ms. Needleman covers technology for The Wall Street Journal in
New York. Email sarah.needleman@wsj.com.
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
January 19, 2020 14:41 ET (19:41 GMT)
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