Democrats widely accuse Facebook leaders of allowing disinformation to appease Trump and his Republican allies. Biden’s campaign officials also criticized Facebook for choosing not to remove Trump’s misleading statements from its pages and for largely interrupting political advertising in the days immediately before and after the November 3 election.
“It’s just not a great business strategy to upset the new president,” said Sally Hubbard, director of enforcement strategy at the Open Markets Institute, who defended antitrust enforcement against Facebook, Google and other major technology companies.
She and other tech critics are pressing Biden to take a different approach from previous administrations, and they already have several allies advising the transition as she prepares to take over next month. Gene Kimmelman of Public Knowledge and Sarah Miller of the American Economic Liberties Project, both regular critics of the market power of the technology industry, are helping Biden in the transitions of the Justice and Treasury departments, respectively.
Other transition consultants called for tougher action against the big tech companies. Bill Baer, a Brookings Institution scholar who advises the FTC review team, said last month that the government needs to take bolder antitrust measures. And where oversight is insufficient, Congress may need to regulate, he said.
“Markets are not always self-correcting and case-by-case surveillance may not be the best, most efficient and fastest way to solve problems,” said Baer, speaking personally to the American Bar Association.
While Biden welcomed Facebook associates and detractors to his transition team, he will face pressure from congressional allies and progressive advocacy groups to take an aggressive stance on the company. At a time when Facebook is exposed on several fronts, this could mean real problems for the world’s largest social media network.
The now-elected president has called for the Internet industry’s sacred legal liability protections to be lifted, specifically citing Facebook’s treatment of election-related misinformation. He drew attention in January when he bluntly said, “I was never a fan of Facebook,” a company whose digital reach helped propel Obama-Biden’s move to the White House in previous elections.
Many Facebook critics in Washington hope this will translate into politics. “Joe Biden made it clear that he will put workers first, not wealthy corporations like Facebook,” Rep. David Cicilline (DR.I.), who as chairman of the House’s Judiciary antitrust subcommittee proposed a reformulation of the antitrust laws of USA, said in a statement.
“Not only am I confident that the Biden administration will not only take steps to hold Facebook accountable, but I believe that we are on track to implement the recommendations of the antitrust subcommittee to restore competition in the digital market,” continued Cicilline, who headed a fundraiser. antitrust funds for Biden during the campaign.
Cicilline is far from alone in Congress in his animosity towards Facebook. The tone regarding technology has changed in Washington since Biden stepped down from public office four years ago. The Obama administration regularly used the confidence of Silicon Valley brains to get new ideas and people, and left companies relatively unregulated during a period of meteoric growth. President Barack Obama up led a city hall at Facebook headquarters in 2011.
Any executive action or legislation is likely to address industry issues in general, not Facebook specifically – taking a different and potentially more successful approach than the Trump administration, which has been thwarted in many of the complaints it pursued against specific companies
“The checks and balances in the system make it even more difficult for the White House to punish an individual company, as we saw in the Trump administration with the White House’s repeated – and largely unsuccessful, efforts to use policy tools against individual companies like Amazon and TikTok for political gains, ”said Matt Perault, a former director of public policy at Facebook who now heads the Center for Science and Technology Policy at Duke University.
“But it is certainly possible that the Biden team’s skepticism about Facebook could result in a greater likelihood of antitrust scrutiny by the Department of Justice and the FTC,” he continued. “And it is possible that a White House in Biden could use its aggressive pulpit to try to force changes that they cannot achieve through executive action or legislation.”
Facebook critics say time has revealed the weakness of the company’s highly profitable business model: offering its social network to users for free and then collecting their personal data to target them with content and advertising. They said it gives oxygen to disinformation and conspiracy theories, and creates echo chambers that can radicalize certain users.
Facebook has taken steps to label the misinformation on its platform or, in some cases, remove it entirely. In the weeks since the election, the company has been particularly vigilant about labeling election-related misinformation, including Trump’s false allegations of electoral fraud, although critics note that it still allows content to reach users.
But in Washington, its critics increasingly have an audience across the political spectrum. Animus in relation to Facebook is a point of unity between central Democrats and progressives, who are already in conflict over other policies that the new government plans to follow.
“What better company to pursue than Facebook, because everyone knows who they are, they are big, they look like a monopoly?” said Rob Atkinson, president of the Foundation for Information Technology and Innovation, who opposes the FTC’s lawsuit against Facebook. “They will face challenges in a Biden government that will have to show its authenticity to the left that: ‘Hey, we are doing something.'”
Republicans also complain about the way Facebook handles political discourse, with some saying that its lack of significant competition gives it the power to censor users’ political views. After the FTC and state attorney generals announced their lawsuits on Facebook this month, lawmakers on both sides of the corridor expressed support.
Trump himself, although a prolific poster on social media, has taken shots against Facebook and Twitter for checking out these posts. He took his anger out of companies with an executive order instructing the FTC and the Federal Communications Commission to limit the scope of Section 230, the 1996 law that protects internet companies from legal liability for user-generated content. The president has also repeatedly asked Congress to repeal the law, even going so far as to veto a major defense spending bill on Wednesday because lawmakers failed to comply with his demands.
But bipartisan frustration with technology does not yet mean that lawmakers will put aside party differences. Both sides are frustrated by the way that Facebook, Twitter and YouTube owned by Google police political content, for example, but Democrats want more moderation and Republicans ask for less.
“I am interested to see if the Biden administration can be influenced by those within the Democratic Party who are calling for more censorship from conservative views,” said Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), chairman of the Senate antitrust subcommittee, in a statement .
Even with these divisions, general animosity towards Facebook could help anti-Facebook advocates to gain traction with the new administration. And they are pushing their agenda long before they take office.
“The Biden-Harris government can and must do much more than the scope of litigation, which often takes years to resolve,” said Rashad Robinson, president of the social justice group Color of Change. “This is just the beginning of a long road to break Big Tech’s concentration of corporate power.”
Ultimately, the way Biden fulfills key Cabinet positions, including the heads of the Department of Justice and FTC’s antitrust division, will indicate how his government plans to deal with competition issues in the technology industry. Biden’s transition team, which declined to comment on this story, appears so far to be walking the middle line on appointments – and getting hit.
Biden is being criticized by progressive groups, who formed a coalition called the Revolving Door Project to oppose candidates affiliated with the industry, for selecting former Facebook director of public policy Louisa Terrell as director of legislative affairs for the White House and Jessica Hertz, a former Facebook associate attorney general, as a general legal adviser for the transition.
Others with links to Facebook were also nominated for the main posts. Jeff Zients, a veteran of the Obama administration and co-president of the Biden transition, has been named coordinator of Covid-19 at the White House. Previously, he served on Facebook’s board of directors, but reportedly left amid disagreements with the leadership.
And three Facebook employees have been added to the Biden agency’s review teams in the weeks since they were first announced. Facebook said these employees, who include a public policy executive and an associate general counsel, continue to work at the company while volunteering for the transition.
This could give Facebook and its army of lobbyists natural entry points as they seek to soften relations with the new administration. Facebook built a huge lobbying machine in Washington, spending $ 16.7 million last year – almost double what it spent in 2016. A Facebook spokesman declined to comment on this story or discuss Facebook’s reach. for the next Biden government.
In an interview with Dr. Anthony Fauci last month, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg noted that the company offered to support Biden’s response to the coronavirus pandemic. Zuckerberg also told Congress in October that Facebook is open to increased transparency requirements for social media companies, along with changes to the 1996 technology liability law that both Trump and Biden attacked.