Wednesday’s antitrust hearing in Congress was a landmark occasion, giving Congress a chance to criticize four of the world’s most powerful men, who control four companies (Facebook, Apple, Amazon, and Google), each so massive that rival the nation states in their power. Observers are increasingly concerned about the massive and unprecedented impact of these businesses on the economy, the millions of American citizens who use their products, and the thousands of small businesses that are trying, often unsuccessfully, to compete with them.
But Republican audience members focused primarily on one specific thing: unsubstantiated claims that tech companies are biased against conservatives.
“I’ll just get down to business. Great technology searches for conservatives. That is not a suspicion, it is not a hunch, it is a fact, “said Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), who from the start of the hearing addressed Republicans on the committee in questions about bias against conservatives. For a moment, she repeatedly yelled at a fellow Democrat, Rep. Mary Scanlon, interrupting her assigned questioning time because he was offended that she was targeting anti-conservative bias to promote “fringe conspiracy theories.”
Not surprisingly, many members of the Republican committee chose to focus on the alleged technological bias. But it’s a significant distraction from what really matters: whether tech companies have used their power to crush their competition and exploit online user behavior and data in a way that hurts Americans from all political persuasions.
Accusations that social media platforms have an anti-conservative bias for years have been a rallying cry for President Trump and the Republican party. And before Wednesday, Republicans attacked the focus of the Democratic-led Judicial Chamber subcommittee hearing, asking him to focus more on anti-conservative bias and to bring up Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey. Twitter is a small company compared to, say, Facebook, but it has recently taken steps to moderate President Trump’s posts for violating disinformation and hate speech policies, infuriating Republicans.
Democrats, meanwhile, tried to steer the conversation toward topics more directly related to antitrust, as if these companies intimidated their competitors and how they did it, such as when Facebook acquired its then rival Instagram in 2012; or if these companies exploit the privacy of their users, such as the way Google tracks people’s online browsing on the web with cookies; Or if Apple is foreclosing its competitors by taking an unreasonable reduction in earnings from independent app developers on its App Store.
What really matters here is whether the business practices of these companies are hurting consumers, most of whom have no choice but to use Big Tech in one way or another if they want to do basic things online like searching the web, order products or stay in touch with your friends.
In an earlier era, Republicans and Democrats on the committee could have come together to try to focus on what has been seen as an area of relative bipartisan agreement: protecting the free market. That did not happen in today’s hearing. Instead, it was an exhibition of partisan divisions.
While it’s true that many high-ranking corporate employees on Facebook, Google, and Apple, who tend to be college-educated people living in major metropolitan areas, identify themselves as politically liberal, like many others in their demographics, there is no evidence Definitive that Facebook, YouTube, Google or any other important technological platform discriminates against conservative content.
In his testimony, Republicans in Wednesday’s hearing cited media investigations and right-wing news groups such as Project Veritas and Breitbart News, but at best these sources seem to indicate that many Big Tech employees have liberal political beliefs, a phenomenon that is neither illegally nor inherently conspiratorial.
Historically, the types of content and pages that always work well on Facebook are often news and expert pages like Breitbart News and Ben Shapiro. And as my colleague Peter Kafka wrote this spring, these same tech companies often face criticism from Democrats about how their platforms incentivize users to post polarized and politically extreme content because their algorithms prioritize engagement, and polarized content is good for that users get involved with it. .
After Jordan used his assigned initial time round to question Google CEO Sundar Pichai about an alleged anti-conservative bias (based on leaked emails from a former Google marketing executive who said the company used its products to get there). Latinos with information about the 2016 presidential election), he twice interrupted his Democratic colleague, Rep. Mary Scanlon (D-PA) to yell at him on the other side of the floor, starting a shouting match with the subcommittee chairman Democrat David Cicilline, who tried to maintain order.
Jordan reacted this way after Scanlon said he would like to focus his questions on antitrust issues rather than what he called “marginal conspiracy theories.” After Cicilline’s repeated calls to order, and after someone else in Congress, not identifiable from the live broadcast, yelled at Jordan to “put on the mask.” – Jordan stopped and let Scanlon continue to question Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos with his allotted time.
The entire debacle was another reminder that today’s audience is primarily a political spectacle, a time prepared for sound bites, and many Republicans in the audience decided to use their time with these powerful company leaders to advance their own political agendas. . Congressional hearings like this are not expected to lead directly to antitrust action, but they can help set the stage for that when politicians strategically use their time to elicit leaders’ responses with sharp, unified lines of questioning.
Rank Republican James Sensenbrenner offered a narrow window of measured optimism for bipartisan cooperation toward the end of the hearing. He said that antitrust probes occupy a significant and historic place in the American government, but that, in the case of technology, regulators need to review old decisions and speed up the application of existing laws instead of writing a whole new set of rules.
But to a large extent, Sensenbrenner’s fellow Republicans were not interested in discussing antitrust issues, both under new and existing laws. As a Democratic member of Congress told Recode, Republicans seemed more interested in creating explosive confrontations by denouncing alleged “liberal biases” that can be played on conservative cable TV (in fact, Jordan’s clips have already been subject of discussion in Fox News). Today’s hearing was a sign that in today’s hyperpolarized political climate, Congress is unlikely to lead a real, meaningful, bipartisan legislative effort to curb Big Tech anytime soon.
Support Vox explanatory journalism
Every day at Vox, we aim to answer your most important questions and provide you, and our audience worldwide, with information that has the power to save lives. Our mission has never been more vital than it is right now: empowering you through understanding. Vox’s work is reaching more people than ever, but our distinctive brand of explanatory journalism requires resources, particularly during a pandemic and economic downturn. Your financial contribution will not constitute a donation, but will allow our staff to continue offering free articles, videos and podcasts with the quality and volume required at this time. Please consider making a contribution to Vox today.
