Lawmakers See Path to Rein In Tech, but It Isn’t Smooth
The New York Times
If what faces Big Tech is anything like what happened to Big Tobacco, the road ahead is likely to be a yearslong battle over proposed rules and regulations.
WASHINGTON — “Facebook and Big Tech are facing a Big Tobacco moment,” Senator Richard Blumenthal, Democrat of Connecticut, said this week when a whistle-blower testified about how the social media company’s products harmed teenagers.
“I think that that’s an appropriate analogy,” Senator Cynthia Lummis, Republican of Wyoming, added later.
The whistle-blower’s testimony, and the thousands of internal documents she shared with lawmakers, generated unusual bipartisan bonhomie in a divided Washington. Senators said it was time for Congress to coalesce around new regulations to rein in the company and perhaps the technology industry as a whole.
