Sens. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) and Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) have just unveiled their long-awaited draft American Innovation and Choice Online Act. If passed into law, the bill would effectively outlaw a wide array of common tech industry practices in which platforms favor their own products. This despite scant evidence that such practices are detrimental to consumers, that they prevent rivals from entering online markets, or that they harm innovation.
The pervading urge to regulate tech firms is rooted in doomsday scenarios that have almost no bearing on real-world costs and benefits. Often, debate centers on a mix of far-fetched claims — like fears that Big Tech is about to anoint dictatorial governments, eliminate free speech, or reveal your deepest secrets to the world — alongside more plausible, but unverified, assertions that tech firms stifle competition and innovation.
This conflation of tangible issues with dystopian fantasy is evidenced by the early pronouncements surrounding Klobuchar and Grassley’s bill. For instance, supporters declare that the “Senate must continue to reassert its power over the handful of men whose corporations undermine economic dynamism, eviscerate the free press, and threaten our democracy itself.”
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