Charleston Reporter

Conservatives like Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) have made antitrust reform a key to controlling Big Tech, but analysis by Ashley Baker of the Committee for Justice shows that such measures wouldn’t work.

Graham was one of the five Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee who supported the American Innovation and Choice Online Act (Senate Bill 2992), which passed the committee via 16-6 bipartisan vote. Graham is one of several conservatives who have spoken out often about the problem of Big Tech “canceling” speech it doesn’t agree with.

But Baker, director of public policy at the Committee for Justice, which opposes the bill, says SB 2992 would neither break up the Big Tech firms, nor would it prohibit them from canceling any speech on their platforms with which they disagreed. Instead, the measure would only empower government overseers like Lina Khan, chair of the Federal Trade Commission, to have more oversight. 

“If this bill were law, not a single company would be required to do anything different to conservative speech on their platform,” Baker told the St. Louis Reporter. “Furthermore, the behavior that the bill seeks to regulate is not anti-competitive. Companies that are not covered under the bill promote their own products and services, both in stores and online, every day. If it is the behavior that is the problem, then the bill wouldn’t apply to just a handful of companies."

The bill also would give additional powers to government oversight agencies such as the FTC, chaired by Khan, a Democrat. Late last year, Khan proposed a new strategic plan that would dramatically shift the FTC’s goals toward “marginalized” communities, citing increased focusing on the “underserved,” and prioritizing social “equity,” according to the plan’s text.

Groups such as Free Press have argued against the measure, saying it would keep companies from removing from their sites “any business that traffics in hateful, racist or otherwise harmful content,” while others, like Accountable Tech, support the bill because of its efforts to tackle the the “existential threat” social media poses to the information stream and democracy. 

“I have tremendous respect for Free Press and appreciate their concerns, but we wouldn't be supporting this bill if we felt it threatened platforms' ability to properly enforce their rules to safeguard people from harm,” Jesse Lehrich, co-founder of Accountable Tech, told Protocol’s website.

Not only would the antitrust measure not prohibit tech “cancel” culture, it might actually have the opposite effect, according to critics such as Richard Hanania, president of the Center for the Study of Partisanship and Ideology. Hanania wrote in a Feb. 23 Newsweek op-ed, “If passed, these bills will be enforced by the Federal Trade Commission, led by Lina Khan, who has argued that increased antitrust enforcement would harm a Big Tech business model that ‘incentivizes the dissemination of disinformation.’ One of Khan's senior advisors is Meredith Walker, who has called the Daily Caller a ‘hate site.’”

The Judiciary Committee placed the bill on the Senate’s calendar on Jan. 20, with Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) and Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) voting in favor of it. The bill is sponsored by Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN).

CNBC reported that the bill would prohibit platforms such as Google, Amazon and Apple, and possibly some social media platforms, from so-called "self-preferencing," which would prevent them from discriminating against smaller businesses that use their services.