House takes aim at Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google with five antitrust bills

These days, it’s hard to get Democrats and Republicans in Congress to agree on anything.So it’s notable that Democrats on the Antitrust Subcommittee announced a slew of antitrust legislation today aimed at limiting the power of the tech giants — Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google, specifically — with some bipartisan support from their Republican colleagues. But other leading Republican senators have been more narrowly focused on a whole other set of issues around perceived anti-conservative bias and limiting tech companies’ power to ban conservative figures.Subcommittee ranking member Rep. Ken Buck (R-CO), who is an original co-sponsor on all five bills, has said he views antitrust legislation as addressing other Republicans’ concerns, because if there are alternatives to Facebook, Google, and Twitter, then there will be more diverse social media companies representing conservative viewpoints.“Right now, unregulated tech monopolies have too much power over our economy. The bill could also impact the other major tech giants like Google that are well known for acquiring their competition.The bill is sponsored by Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) and co-sponsored by ranking member Buck, the Colorado Republican.This bill would make it illegal for a “dominant online platform” to own another line of business that is a conflict of interest. But more broadly, it could impact all the tech giants.The bill is co-sponsored by Rep. Lance Gooden (R-TX).The Augmenting Compatibility and Competition by Enabling Service Switching (ACCESS) Act will require platforms to make user data — defined as any information the platform collects that is linked to a specific person or their device — portable and interoperable with other services.The logic behind this bill is that once people start using one platform, they won’t move to a competitor because it would be too hard or impossible to move their data over, too.