Five new bills aim to break up Big Tech platforms, force them to play nice

“By acquiring their competition and eliminating alternatives in the marketplace, they are denying fair access to the free market for small businesses across the country.”While the legislation would not ban the platforms outright, it would subject companies to new regulations that would constrain their ability to provide certain products and services, while leveling the playing field for competitors.The five bills all attempt to address issues that have arisen as various platforms have grown in power. It would also stop companies from using private data to get a leg-up on the competition, and it would prevent them from kicking competitors off a platform or harming competitors by restricting their ability to “access or interoperate with the same platform, operating system, hardware, and software features that are available to the covered platform operator’s own products, services, or lines of business.” Introduced by Cicilline and co-sponsored by Gooden, the bill would levy significant penalties on companies that fail to comply—the greater of either 15 percent of the company’s average daily revenue or 30 percent of average daily revenue of the offending line of business.Google’s ad marketplace would be impacted as well. The bill, which was introduced by Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wa.) and co-sponsored by Gooden, would impose fines similar to the American Choice and Innovation Online Act.The Augmenting Compatibility and Competition by Enabling Service Switching (ACCESS) Act, introduced by Rep. Mary Gay Scanlon (D-Pa.) and co-sponsored by Rep. Burgess Owens (R-Utah), would require platforms to guarantee some minimum standard of interoperability and data portability.