Year of reckoning for Big Tech: How U.S. lawmakers plan to rein in companies like Facebook and Google in 2022

If 2021 had a battle cry for U.S. lawmakers facing off with the world's biggest tech companies, it would be this: "Legislation is coming."

This year, lawmakers went beyond just grilling companies like Apple, Google, Facebook, Twitter and Microsoft, collectively known as Big Tech.  They tabled new legislation. New bills now before the U.S. Congress include measures aimed at addressing a broad range of concerns — from anti-competitive behaviour to the mental health impact of using social media and the spread of disinformation on online platforms. "I think Big Tech today represents the biggest accumulation of power, market power and monopoly power that the world has ever seen," Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas said at a congressional hearing in April. While it's not a guarantee that the bills will pass in 2022, the stage has been set for a massive shift in the regulatory landscape for Big Tech.

In addition, U.S. President Joe Biden has made it clear that his administration will hold tech companies to account, with an executive order tasking federal agencies to enforce fair competition rules. 

Antitrust bills introduced in Congress this year will be the subject of intense debate next year.  Lawmakers are likely to focus on efforts to clamp down on the reach of Big Tech companies and reform the country's fair competition laws. "I think a lot did coalesce this year," said Eleanor Fox, an antitrust professor at New York University. "There's a real question about whether things will change next year, that is whether we're getting closer and closer to really getting a grip on Big Tech and controlling their abuses in the United States." Legislators say those abuses include "killer acquisitions," or the practice of buying up rivals in order to crush competition. Online platforms have also been criticized for favouring their own content or products when it's hosted on their sites.

"Our antitrust laws are very weak," Fox said, noting that a key piece of the new legislation would shift the burden of proof from governments to Big Tech companies when it comes to justifying that their mergers don't harm competition.

Legislators have been pointing to Facebook's acquisition of Instagram and WhatsApp as an example of monopolistic behaviour.

Minnesota Democrat Sen. Amy Klobuchar has introduced a bill to increase the budgets of federal agencies tasked with the enforcement of fair competition rules. "Our economy today faces a massive competition problem. We can no longer sweep this issue under the rug and hope our existing laws are adequate," Klobuchar said in a statement in February.

Back-to-back moves by Biden this year also signalled his administration's intent to crack down on Big Tech.

In June, Biden appointed Lina Khan, a well-known critic of Silicon Valley and a 32-year-old associate law professor at Columbia University in New York, as head of the Federal Trade Commission.

Shortly after, he signed an executive order that echoed many of the issues raised in the new bills before Congress around fair competition. He also made another prominent appointment, choosing Jonathan Kanter, another critic of Big Tech, to lead the antitrust division of the U.S. Department of Justice.

"Capitalism without competition isn't capitalism. It's exploitation," Biden said in July.

While there has been bipartisan support for these measures, Democrats and Republicans are still at odds about how to create a competitive and fair landscape for consumers and businesses in the digital age.

Tech executives have also repeatedly defended their practices even as they've said they are open to rewriting some of the rules that govern their industry.

"There are a number of bipartisan bills right now. It's possible that one or two of them will pass. It's also possible that nothing happens," said Fox. "U.S. Congress is very much in disarray. And it's very hard to predict what will have legs."