Representative Ken Buck, a Republican from Colorado, criticized Google on Wednesday for its connections to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), after a House subcommittee hearing on antitrust with America’s top technology executives.
“If Google wants to get closer to communist China, Sundar Pichai must answer for the atrocities committed by the Chinese Communist Party,” he told Fox News after Pichai, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Apple’s Tim Cook, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg testified before The congress.
The Colorado Republican has been an outspoken critic of the CCP’s tactics and introduced legislation in the House on Wednesday based on Senator Josh Hawley’s “Slave Free Business Certification Act,” which seeks to hold US companies accountable for any use of forced labor across the country. supply chain.
In addition to uncovering troubling ties between the big tech companies and the CCP, there was consensus between the two sides that the audience revealed the dire efforts to suppress competition in the free market, Buck added.
“It is absolutely clear that these platforms are using their position to stifle innovation and it is heard from both sides of the aisle,” he continued. “You hear CEOs can’t talk about the specific examples they are facing, so it was very informative.”
Buck also addressed the idea that anti-competitive practices can lead to political biases and censorship of certain materials on the web, specifically with respect to the news and the media.
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“Citizens can choose from hundreds, if not thousands, of news sources in this country. Some people on the left might say that Fox News or The Wall Street Journal is biased to the right,” he explained. “And others may say that MSNBC or The Washington Post is biased to the left. And we know that when we search for a news source, we know what we receive because there are hundreds, if not thousands, of them.”
“But when there is only one platform, when there is only Google, and you look for something and drop Breitbart on page 19 or drop Donald Trump Jr. on page 23, you don’t have a chance to say,” Google doesn’t meet my needs. So I’m going to find another search engine. “It doesn’t happen,” Buck continued. “It is a very different situation when you have a domination platform that is involved in political bias. And that is what you have with Google, Facebook, Twitter and others.”
He then discussed the comments made by Rep. Jerry Nadler, DN.Y., during the hearing on Facebook’s acquisition of Instagram and agreed that the circumstances surrounding the deal were suspect at best and should be investigated further. thoroughly by the federal government.
“It should have been dealt with by the Obama administration,” Buck said. “It was acquired during the Obama administration and it is clear that Facebook used coercion to acquire Instagram. They threatened and threatened to take them out of business unless they agreed to sell them. And the CEO of Instagram said this at the time.”
He added: “It’s one of those things where you can look back now and say, ‘Instagram wouldn’t be where it is now if it weren’t for Facebook resources and the merger.’ But I do agree with President Nadler that There are many red flags about that merger and that the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) should carefully analyze it. “
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Congress will continue its research on big technology and will likely publish a report on the findings before the November election, in an effort to lay the groundwork for the legislation when new lawmakers are sworn in in January, Buck said.
“It is not a partisan effort. It is not an anti-business effort. It is an effort to strengthen the United States, and I think both parties are willing to do it,” he explained. “The next step, the process, where are we now, we have to listen to regulators. We have to listen to consumer advocacy groups. We have to consider some of these privacy issues and decide if the law is enough and if regulators They have the resources they need, and that’s where we should go next. Once we complete the investigation, we have to find out where the law is sufficient and whether the resources are sufficient to address this. “
