Axios

The US is "far worse off than you think" when it comes to social media undermining its democracy, according to Nobel Peace Prize laureate and journalist Maria Ressa. Ressa, a Filipino American co-founder of news organization Rappler, says the next wave of elections around the world, including the US midterms in November 2022, provides another opportunity for social media to spread disinformation, divide people against one another and incite violence. She argues nations need to require accountability for tech firms like Meta, which owns Facebook, and Twitter.

Antitrust action is desperately needed to reel in the practices of Big Tech companies, especially around privacy, according to Google's former head of advertising. Competition in tech is needed to ensure people are able to have private online experiences, because large companies like Google will never truly care about user privacy, Sridhar Ramaswamy said. Ramaswamy spent 15 years running Google's lucrative advertising business before launching Neeva, a subscription-based search engine.

A glut of major tech policy bills await action as Congress' summer recess looms — and anything that doesn't pass by then is unlikely to pass at all in a midterm election season. The ambitious tech agenda this Congress started out with 18 months ago is getting squeezed out by other legislative priorities, including gun control, the Jan. 6 investigation, and the economy. Here's what's in the queue: