New York, Washington “From Army Veteran to Astrophysicist” is written in white letters above a photo of a soldier holding the US flag. On the next page is the same man in college clothes with a fleece jacket and a beard: “Like, Joshua learned that on Youtube. What will you learn?” The ad is just one example of many. “From dedicated mom to skincare entrepreneur” reads another ad above a photo of a young woman.
For a few weeks, YouTube has been running a massive advertising campaign in the USA with double-page ads in newspapers and magazines and advertising videos on television and online: the video platform wants to show everywhere how useful it is for society.
Youtube is not the only Alphabet subsidiary. Google also advertises in videos of people entering search queries such as “How to cure…”, “Where can I get vaccinated?” or “How to save the planet?” into their computers. The Facebook parent company Meta runs spots entitled “An open conversation about content regulation”. And the tech association Netchoice, which represents the interests of Amazon, Facebook and Google, among others, has spent more than a million dollars on Facebook ads on competition issues since October.
Above all, all these spots and advertisements are intended to convey one message: We are the good guys.
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It is no coincidence that the tech companies are launching their image campaigns at this point in time. Greater regulation of big tech is one of the few issues on which Republicans and Democrats in US politics agree, at least in principle.
Just this week, the head of the US competition authority FTC recorded a decisive victory. A court has dismissed Facebook’s allegations of bias against Lina Khan, who is considered a Big Tech terror, and accepted the FTC’s unfair competition lawsuit against the social media group at a second attempt.
She accuses Facebook of abusing its monopoly position with WhatsApp and Instagram. Therefore, the takeovers would have to be reversed. Jonathan Kanter, a critic of Google, also sits at the head of the competition department in the Justice Department.
Decisions have to be made by summer
The technology companies know that the coming weeks and months will be crucial. The US Congress has been fighting Big Tech for years: relevant CEOs are regularly invited to hearings, and almost all committees dealing with business and the judiciary are working on regulatory laws. But the big hit to redefine the rules for the global tech companies has not yet succeeded.
If so, new laws will be introduced in the coming months. Because time is running out on Capitol Hill: by the summer at the latest, when the parties are concentrating on the congressional elections in November, there will be political standstill in Washington for the time being.
There is no shortage of suggestions, and the statements made by former Facebook employee Francis Haugen have highlighted the urgency of reforms. The House of Representatives, one of two chambers in Congress, passed some antitrust changes last year. They are the result of a 16-month investigation into the competitive practices of Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google, which concluded: The tech giants are exploiting their monopoly on many levels.
Several dozen other draft laws are circulating, including those on online privacy, protecting children and regulating smartphone apps. But how many of the initiatives will ultimately make it through the Senate is uncertain, in the upper chamber of Congress the majorities are even tighter than in the House of Representatives.
The so-called American Innovation and Choice Online Act, drafted by Democrat Amy Klobuchar and Republican Chuck Grassley, currently seems to have the best chance of being passed. The law aims to prevent companies like Amazon from favoring their own products and services.
Republicans and Democrats have not yet been able to come to an agreement
In contrast, work on the so-called Liability Shield, regulated in Section 230 of the US Communications Act, is making little progress. Basically, it’s about whether platforms like Twitter and Facebook are liable for content. Expert Paul Gallant from the Cowen’s Washington Research Group Institute is skeptical that anything is moving. “If the storming of the Capitol organized online didn’t change anything, then what?” he told CNBC. While Democrats advocate strict regulation against disinformation and hate speech, Republicans tend to believe that big tech censors unpopular opinions.
Twitter recently banned radical Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene’s account. Ex-President Donald Trump has been banned since the storming of the Capitol, which he called for, and wants to start his own network.
The polarization and the narrow majorities are therefore reasons why the big hit has not yet succeeded – even if both parties basically agree that reforms are necessary and criticize Big Tech in equal measure. A key factor is the lack of commitment from the White House.
The Democrats in Congress spent President Joe Biden’s first year in office managing the pandemic and fighting for the two trillion packages. Only one of these has been passed so far, infrastructure reform, the second part of Biden’s economic agenda, is hanging in the balance.
“I think the key is whether Biden gets involved,” said the pundit Gallant. “If Biden decides that Big Tech is a priority, things can move quickly.” Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal, on the other hand, is slowly losing patience: “So far, the White House hasn’t really been active,” he told the Wall Street Journal. Democratic Senator Klobuchar also urged more initiative. “There is a bipartisan dynamic to get something done and the public is on our side.”
Another restraining factor has to do with money. The tech giants are still among the largest political donors – and they do a lot to ensure that lawmakers do not forget the relevance of the corporations to the economy. Amazon, for example, advertises on Capitol Hill that it is investing heavily in infrastructure, especially in urban areas. For example, the company wants to finance housing and local public transport around the location of the new Headquarters 2 in southern Washington.
The sums for political lobbying are considerable. According to the Opensecrets.org platform, Amazon spent $15.3 million on lobbying last year. Facebook is at $14.7 million and Alphabet is nearly $9 million.
More: This woman wants to break Big Tech’s market power