WASHINGTON, September 16, 2021 – At a virtual conference hosted by Politico on Wednesday, Amy Klobuchar, D-Minnesota, repeated what she sees as a need to equip federal agencies with adequate resources to deal with privacy issues related to Big Tech – even as it battles on parallel issues like antitrust.

Klobuchar and Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, introduced bipartisan legislation in May that would “ensure that antitrust authorities have the resources they need to protect consumers.” The Democrats also introduced funding avenues in their reconciliation bill for the Federal Trade Commission to tackle the myriad of issues related to Big Tech, including data privacy concerns and big mergers.

“It is a major priority and has been of mine to get privacy money into the FTC,” Klobuchar said Wednesday. “That should not come at the expense of the major case they just refiled against Facebook and the antitrust work that has to be done.

Last month, the FTC, under chair Lina Khan, filed an amended complaint against Facebook for alleged anticompetitive behavior, arguing that Facebook “holds monopoly power” and engaged in “anticompetitive acquisitions.”

And earlier this month, four members of Congress asked the Department of Justice to dig into allegations that Facebook and Google colluded to ensure that neither hindered each other’s performance in the digital advertising space, which both combined dominate.

“These companies know how many resources they [agencies] have,” Klobuchar added. “We’re in a merger mania right now, both with the DOJ antitrust and the FTC. And they even in the past had to pause some of their review of mergers because of resource issues. And they can’t just take on all tech and not do anything else when it comes to antitrust, and that’s why I’m such a big believer that we must better fund that part of both of these agencies or we are going to make a mockery of our antitrust laws.”

Klobuchar also said the big technology companies have also put up resistance to calls for national privacy legislation, and only came around when the states began implementing their own rules. She noted that they don’t want a “patchwork quilt” of different laws, which would make it too complex to follow.

Klobuchar’s track record

Klobuchar has introduced, and has supported, a number of bills that would target big technology companies. In July, she introduced a bill that would remove Section 230 liability protections from social media platforms if they allow misinformation on vaccines to permeate. She also helped introduce legislation that would amend Section 230 to hold companies accountable for information on their platform that they get paid for.

Klobuchar was among three Democratic lawmakers who also introduced legislation that would ban app store operators from requiring app providers to use their in-app payment systems. That was before a U.S. district judge handed down a judgment that found Apple committed no anticompetition violations against the giant, after it banned Epic Games’ Fortnite from its app store because it circumvented the app store’s fees.

WASHINGTON, September 15, 2021 – Members of Congress have sent a letter Wednesday to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg urging the company to stop its plan to launch a new platform for kids, following a report by the Wall Street Journal that cites company documents that reportedly shows the company knows its platforms harm the mental health of teens.

The letter, signed by Edward Markey, D-Massachusetts, Kathy Castor, D-Florida, and Lori Trahan, D-Massachusetts, also asks Facebook to provide answers by October 6 to questions including whether the company has, and who, reviewed the mental health research as cited in the Journal report; whether the company will agree to abandon plans to launch a new platform for children or teens; and when the company will begin studying its platforms’ impact on the kids’ mental health.

The letter also demands an update on the company’s plans for new products targeting children or teens, asks for copies of internal research regarding the mental health of this demographic, and copies of any external research the company has commissioned or accessed related to this matter.

The letter cites the Journal’s September 14 story, which reports that the company has spent the past three years conducting studies into how photo-sharing app Instagram, which Facebook owns, affects millions of young users, and found that the app is “harmful for a sizable percentage of them, most notably teenage girls.” The story uses the story of a teen who had to see a therapist due to an eating disorder due to exposure to images of other users’ bodies.

The story also cites a presentation that said teens were blaming Instagram for anxiety, depression, and the desire to kill themselves.

The head of Instagram, Adam Mosseri, told the Journal that research on mental health was valuable and that Facebook was late to realizing the drawback of connecting large swatch of people, according to the story. But he added that there’s “a lot of good that comes with what we do.”

Facebook told Congress it was planning ‘Instagram for kids’

Back in March, during a congressional hearing about Big Tech’s influence, Zuckerberg said Instagram was in the planning stages of building an “Instagram for kids.” Instagram itself does not allow kids under 13 to use the app.

On April 5, Markey, Castor and Trahan penned their names on another letter to Zuckerberg, which expressed concerns about the plan. “Children are a uniquely vulnerable population online, and images of kids are highly sensitive data,” the April letter said. “Facebook has an obligation to ensure that any new platforms or projects targeting children put those users’ welfare first, and we are skeptical that Facebook is prepared to fulfil this obligation.”

The plan was also met with opposition from the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood, the Center for Humane Technology, Common Sense Media, and the Center for Digital Democracy, who said the app “preys on their fear of missing out as their ravenous desire for approval by peers exploits their developmental growth.

“The platform’s relentless focus on appearance, self-presentation, and branding presents challenges to adolescents’ privacy and well-being,” the opponents said. “Younger children are even less developmentally equipped to deal with these challenges, as they are learning to navigate social interactions, friendships, and their inner sense of strengths during this crucial window of development.”

At the March hearing, Zuckerberg, however, claimed that social apps to connect other people can have positive mental health benefits.

And then in August, Sens. Richard Blumenthal, D-Connecticut, and Marsha Blackburn, R-Tennessee, sent a letter to Zuckerberg asking for their research on mental health. Facebook responded without the company’s research, but said there are challenges with doing such research, the Journal said. “We are not aware of a consensus among studies or experts about how much screen time is ‘too much,’” according to the Journal, citing the response letter to the senators.

WASHINGTON, September 2, 2021 – Nearly 60 public interest groups signed a letter Thursday urging the House party leaders to push for a vote on six antirust bills that cleared the House judiciary committee in June.

The goal of the six bills is to rein in the power of Big Tech through new antirust liability provisions, including new merger and acquisition review, measures to prevent anticompetitive activity, and providing government enforcers more power to break-up or separate big businesses. They include American Choice and Innovation Online Act, H.R. 3816, Platform Competition and Opportunity Act, H.R. 3826, Ending Platform Monopolies Act, H.R. 3825, Augmenting Compatibility and Competition by Enabling Service Switching (ACCESS) Act, H.R. 3849, Merger Filing Fee Modernization Act, H.R. 3843, and State Antitrust Enforcement Venue Act, H.R. 3460.

The letter, which was directed at House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-California, and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-California, were promoting a package of six bills that were the result of a two-year bipartisan investigation that included 10 hearings, featuring the testimony of the CEOs of the major tech companies, 240 interviews, 1.3 million documents and a 450-page report, the letter notes.

“We believe that these bills will bring urgently needed change and accountability to these companies and an industry that most Americans agree is already doing great harm to our democracy,” the letter said. Public Citizen was the first of the 58 groups on the letter.

America has a monopoly problem. Monopoly power lowers wages, reduces innovation and entrepreneurship, exacerbates income and regional inequality, undermines the free press and access to information, and perpetuates toxic systems of racial, gender, and class dominance,” the letter alleged.

“Big Tech monopolies are at the center of many of these problems,” it continued. “Reining in these companies is an essential first step to reverse the damage of concentrated corporate power throughout our economy. The bills that passed out of the House Judiciary Committee, with bipartisan support, do just that and it is imperative that they move forward in the House.”

List of signatories:

• Public Citizen
• Accountable Tech
• Action Center on Race & the Economy
• ALIGN: The Alliance for a Greater New York
• Alliance for Pharmacy Compounding
• American Booksellers Association
• American Family Voices
• American Independent Business Alliance
• American Specialty Toy Retailing Association
• Artist Rights Alliance
• Athena
• Cambridge Local First
• Center for American Progress
• Center for Digital Democracy
• Center for Popular Democracy
• Committee to Support the Antitrust Laws
• Decode Democracy
• Demos
• Electronic Frontier Foundation
• Friends of the Earth
• Future of Music Coalition
• Gig Workers Rising
• Global Exchange
• Indivisible Georgia Coalition
• Indivisible Hawaii
• Indivisible Ulster/NY19
• Institute for Local Self-Reliance
• International Brotherhood of Teamsters
• Jobs With Justice
• Kairos Action
• Local First Arizona
• Louisville Independent Business Alliance
• Main Street Alliance
• Mainers for Accountable Leadership
• Media Alliance
• Metropolitan Washington Council, AFL-CIO
• National Employment Law Project
• New York Communities For Change
• New York Communities for Change
• North American Hardware and Paint Association
• Open Markets Institute
• Our Revolution
• PowerSwitch Action
• Public Knowledge
• Running Industry Association
• Secure Elections Network
• Service Employees International Union
• Shop Local Raleigh/Greater Raleigh Merchants Association
• SIMBA (Spokane Independent Metro Business Alliance)
• Small Business Rising
• Stand Up Nashville
• StayLocal, an initiative of Urban Conservancy
• Strategic Organizing Center
• SumOfUs
• The Democratic Coalition
• UltraViolet
• Venice Resistance
• Warehouse workers for justice