Where U.S. presidential candidates stand on breaking up Big Tech
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[October 29, 2019]
By Elizabeth Culliford
(Reuters) - In the run-up to the 2020
presidential election, America's big tech companies are being challenged
on many fronts from across the political spectrum, from antitrust
concerns to their policies on political ads and ensuring election
security.
Many of the Democratic presidential candidates have argued in favor of
either breaking up or tightening regulation of firms such as Facebook
Inc <FB.O>, Alphabet Inc’s Google <GOOGL.O> and Amazon.com Inc <AMZN.O>.
Republican President Donald Trump's administration has also stepped up
its scrutiny, announcing a wide-ranging investigation in July into
whether major digital tech companies engaged in anti-competitive
practices.
Trump's Democratic challengers also criticize online platforms for
allowing politicians to make false claims in advertising ahead of the
election next November.
Social media platforms are under particular scrutiny after U.S.
intelligence agencies said Russia used them to wage an influence
operation to interfere with the 2016 election - a claim Moscow has
denied.
Here are some of the candidates' positions on Big Tech.
PRESIDENT TRUMP
Trump, whose social media use and digital advertising campaign helped
propel him to the White House in 2016, in September attacked the
"immense power" of social media giants in his address to the United
Nations.
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Trump has stopped short of calling for tech giants to be broken up, as
Democratic Senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders have, but said
"obviously there is something going on in terms of monopoly," when asked
about major tech companies in a June interview with CNBC.
Trump and other Republicans have also criticized social media companies,
without evidence, for alleged political bias.
The president's eldest son, Donald Trump Jr. wrote an opinion piece for
The Hill political website in September entitled "Free speech
suppression online builds case to break up Big Tech."
Silicon Valley firms have also been at odds with the Trump
administration over policies such as its repeal of Obama-era net
neutrality rules and the impact of the U.S.-China trade war on their
supply chains.
JOE BIDEN
Biden, who was vice president in the Silicon Valley-friendly Obama
administration, has taken a more moderate stance than his progressive
rivals on the issue of big tech company break-ups.
In a May interview with the Associated Press, he said that splitting up
companies such as Facebook was "something we should take a really hard
look at" but that it was "premature" to make a final judgment.
The campaign told Reuters that, as president, Biden would aggressively
use "all the tools available - including utilizing antitrust measures"
to ensure corporations act responsibly.
He did not speak up during a discussion of the issue at the most recent
Democratic debate in October.
Biden has criticized e-commerce giant Amazon's $0 federal tax bill in
2018.
"I have nothing against Amazon, but no company pulling in billions of
dollars of profits should pay a lower tax rate than firefighters and
teachers. We need to reward work, not just wealth," he said in a tweet
in June.
His campaign also clashed with Facebook, Twitter and Google over their
political ad policies after they refused to take down a Trump ad that
the Biden team said contained false claims about his son Hunter's
dealings with Ukraine.
ELIZABETH WARREN
Warren is leading the charge to break up big tech companies on the
grounds they hold outsized influence and stifle competition.
She has called for legislation to restrict large tech platforms - which
she would designate as "platform utilities" -from owning and
participating in a marketplace at the same time.
Under this law, Apple would not be allowed to both run the App Store and
sell its own apps on it, for example.
![](http://archives.lincolndailynews.com/2019/Oct/29/images/ads/current/ldn_more4_121715.png)
She also said she would nominate regulators to unwind anti-competitive
mergers such as Facebook's deals for WhatsApp and Instagram, and
Amazon's deal for Whole Foods.
Warren in October challenged Facebook's policy of exempting politicians'
ads from fact-checking by running ads containing the false claim that
CEO Mark Zuckerberg was endorsing Trump's re-election bid.
The senator from Massachusetts has also said that she would reject
campaign donations over $200 from executives of big tech firms.
BERNIE SANDERS
Sanders, a U.S. senator from Vermont who frequently criticizes corporate
influence, has also called for the break-up of big tech companies such
as Facebook and Amazon.
His administration would "absolutely" try to split apart the companies,
Sanders said at a Washington Post event in July.
He has said that he will have the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) review
all mergers that have taken place during the Trump administration. His
broad plan to reshape corporate America would also mandate all large
companies to be owned partly by their workers.
Asked how he differentiates himself from Warren on major issues, Sanders
told ABC in October: "Elizabeth considers herself - if I got the quote
correctly - to be a capitalist to her bones. I don't."
Sanders has been vocal in his attacks on Amazon over issues such as its
tax contributions and working conditions at its warehouses. In 2018, he
introduced a 'Stop BEZOS Act' in the Senate, in a reference to Amazon
CEO Jeff Bezos, which would make large corporations either pay their
workers more or pay the government for public benefits that their
workers receive.
PETE BUTTIGIEG
In general, Pete Buttigieg, who became Facebook's 287th user shortly
after it was launched in 2004 at Harvard University, where he was a
student, has been more reluctant to slam the tech giants than some other
candidates.
The mayor from South Bend, Indiana, said that the break-up of big tech
companies is a "remedy that should be on the table," but also said it
was not a politician's place to designate which companies should be
broken up.
He has said that the FTC should be empowered to prevent and sometimes
reverse mergers, but argued that large tech companies should be
scrutinized for their actions rather than their size. He says concerns
over monopolies and concerns over data security or privacy should not be
conflated.
He is in favor of having legislation to protect individual data rights
at a national level, including the right to be forgotten - which would
give citizens the power to demand that online platforms delete data
about them, as is the case in Europe.
KAMALA HARRIS
Senator Harris of California, the home of Silicon Valley, has said that
Facebook has not been sufficiently regulated. She has not called
outright for the break-up of big tech firms but said it should be
"seriously" considered.
During the campaign, Harris touted her experience protecting consumers'
online privacy while she was state attorney general.
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U.S. Democratic presidential candidate and former U.S. Vice
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In Congress, Harris, along with fellow candidate Senator Amy
Klobuchar, introduced the bipartisan ENOUGH Act in 2017 to protect
against online exploitation of private images.
Harris recently called on Twitter <TWTR.O> to suspend Trump's
Twitter account, saying his tweets threaten violence. In response,
the company said that Trump's tweets did not violate its policies.
AMY KLOBUCHAR
The Minnesota senator has made oversight of big technology companies
one of her major issues in Congress and argued for data privacy laws
and net neutrality safeguards as priorities at her campaign launch
in February.
Klobuchar has called for tighter regulation of tech giants and
suggested that companies who profit from users' data could be taxed.
She has not endorsed Warren's plan for their break-up, saying that
she would first want investigations. Her plan for her first 100 days
in office includes an "aggressive retrospective review of mergers,"
which she said she would pay for with an extra merger fee on
"megamergers."
She is also one of the authors of the bipartisan Honest Ads Act,
which would require social media platforms to disclose the purchaser
of a political ad, as is required for television and print ads.
ANDREW YANG
Yang, the former CEO of a start-up, has benefited from a surge of
grassroots supporters on social media who style themselves as the #yanggang.
Although the technology entrepreneur said "we would be well served"
if big tech companies were to break themselves up, he is more
focused on dealing with the impact of automation on American jobs
and on regulating artificial intelligence.
Yang has also emphasized the negative effects of tech on mental
health and said he would create a Department of Attention Economy,
ideally led by tech ethics advocate Tristan Harris, to look at how
to responsibly design and use apps and devices.
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He has also called for people to receive a share of the economic
value generated from their data.
CORY BOOKER
New Jersey Senator Booker said that Warren's call to break up the
tech giants was "more like a Donald Trump thing to say" and has
instead argued that stronger antitrust laws need to be enforced.
When questioned at the October Democratic debate on the issue,
Booker advocated reforms to stop tech companies being used "to
undermine our democracy" around elections.
He talked broadly about antitrust, "from pharma to farms," but did
not single out tech companies.
A Stanford University graduate who co-founded his own social media
start-up WayWire, Booker has historically received donations from
major Silicon Valley names such as Zuckerberg. The Facebook CEO also
donated $100 million to Newark schools when Booker was mayor of the
New Jersey city.
BETO O’ROURKE
O'Rourke, a former U.S. representative from Texas, wants to see Big
Tech regulated rather than broken up. He has said he does not think
it is the role of a president to designate which companies should be
dismantled.
O'Rourke's campaign told Reuters he would stand up for small
business by preventing online platform owners from promoting their
own content and products over that of competitors. He also plans to
create a new digital markets regulator to create and enforce rules
on issues such as privacy and data mobility.
O’Rourke, who as a teenager was part of an influential hacking
group, has also said he thinks social media companies should be
treated as publishers.
He wants to amend Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act,
which generally provides immunity to online platforms for content
posted by users, to make social media companies more accountable for
the amplification of hate speech and domestic terrorism on their
platforms.
His campaign recently urged Facebook, Twitter <TWTR.O> and Google to
do more to combat online disinformation, after the campaign
encountered the spread of a false claim about a gunman in a mass
shooting.
JULIAN CASTRO
Castro, who was secretary of housing and urban development in the
Obama administration, has said it is worth considering proposals to
break up the big tech companies and said during the recent
Democratic debate that the U.S. needs to take a stronger stance in
cracking down on monopolistic trade practices.
In the October debate, the former mayor of San Antonio, Texas, also
singled out Amazon by name for helping to "put small businesses out
of business" and for "shortchanging a lot of its workers."
![](http://archives.lincolndailynews.com/2019/Oct/29/images/ads/current/ccaonline_lda050208.png)
TULSI GABBARD
Gabbard, a U.S. representative from Hawaii, has called for the
break-up of big tech companies and praised Warren's plan.
In July, she filed a $50 million lawsuit against Google accusing the
company of discrimination when it temporarily suspended her ad
account after the first Democratic debate. Google said the account
had been automatically flagged for unusual activity, without
specifying exactly what the issue was.
Gabbard said that Google's actions reflected "how the increasing
dominance of big tech companies over our public discourse threatens
our core American values."
TOM STEYER
California billionaire Steyer has said he is running for president
to remove the influence of corporate money from politics. In the
October debate, he said that monopolies either have to be dismantled
or regulated, but that to win against Trump, Democrats would have to
"show the American people that we don't just know how to tax and
have programs to break up companies."
Instead, he said, Democrats must harness the innovation and
competition of the private sector.
Steyer's campaign has been noted for its massive ad spending which
helped push him to the debate stage, including more than $6 million
in Facebook ads, according to Democratic digital firm Bully Pulpit
Interactive.
(Reporting by Elizabeth Culliford, Editing by Soyoung Kim and Sonya
Hepinstall)
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