All eyes were on Capitol Hill to see if Congress could muster up the focus to press Big Tech CEOs on their monopolistic practices. They couldn’t do it.
All eyes were on Capitol Hill to see if Congress could muster up the focus to figure out whether four of the biggest tech companies of our time were really monopolies. What happened instead was rhetorical chaos and grandstanding. Whatever hope there might have been that this hearing before House Judiciary Subcommittee on Antitrust would be focused and pointed in its questions was quickly dashed: It became clear within minutes that the members of Congress were going to take their time to ask more or less whatever questions they wanted of the four tech titans who were assembled before them. Scattershot questions ranged from the Representatives’ personal grievances against Gmail’s spam filters, to the four CEOs’ thoughts on cancel culture, to whether they supported the Southern Poverty Law Center. Several did manage to stick to the program: Rep. Pramila Jayapal of Washington State asked some very direct questions of the four about their data collection practices, whether they’ve ever copied their competitors, and whether they’re systematically monopolizing the ad market while controlling all sides of it. But in between the lines of cutting moments from Jayapal — as well as Representatives Mary Gay Scanlon, Joe Neguse, Lucy McBath, Chairman David Cicilline, and a few others who mostly concentrated on questions of antitrust and whether the companies have too much power — other members such as Jim Jordan of Ohio and Matt Gaetz of Florida seemed to have personal axes to grind with the four CEOs. Jordan and Gaetz, both Republicans, spent several sessions questioning Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Google CEO Sundar Pichai on the allegations that their platforms censor conservative news platforms, an issue that has dogged Big Tech for years but has little to do with the allegations of antitrust activity against them.
