Platforms

Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO) introduced a bill to empower Americans to sue Big Tech companies who act in bad faith by selectively censoring political speech and hiding content created by their competitors.

Senate Subcommittee on The Constitution Chairman Ted Cruz (R-TX) sent a letter to Google CEO Sundar Pichai raising concerns about Google's latest actions to censor political speech with which it disagrees.

As more aspects of our lives increasingly move online, we must contend with operating in a digital public square owned by private entities — one where freedom of expression falls not under the purview of the First Amendment, but under emergent standards being shaped by technology companies. Such challenges have taken on an increased urgency during the COVID-19 pandemic, with Americans turning to social media for interaction and information and finding the platforms awash in false claims and conspiracy theories that threaten health.

Even with the global economy reeling from a pandemic-induced recession and dozens of businesses filing for bankruptcy, tech’s largest companies — still wildly profitable and flush with billions of dollars from years of corporate dominance — are deliberately laying the groundwork for a future where they will be bigger and more powerful than ever.

Long before the coronavirus pandemic, the tech industry yearned to prove its indispensability to the world. Its executives liked to describe their companies as “utilities.” They came by their self-aggrandizement honestly: The founding fathers of Big Tech really did view their creations as essential, and essentially good. In recent years, however, our infatuation with these creations has begun to curdle.

Federal Communications Commissioner Michael O'Rielly said he's unsure whether his agency has the authority to carry out President Donald Trump's executive order targeting tech firms' legal protections. President Trump's order seeks to have the FCC craft regulations limiting the scope of legal immunity that online platforms have under federal law.

Twitter introduced a new feature that prompts users to read links to articles before sharing them.

Over the past year, the Biden for President campaign has called on Facebook to meet the commitment the company made after 2016 — to use its platform to improve American democracy rather than as a tool to spread disinformation that undermines our elections. The campaign has proposed meaningful ways to check disinformation on your platform and to limit the effect of false ads. But Facebook has taken no meaningful action.