Joe Biden prepared to take big stick to Big Tech

Joe Biden will hold America’s tech giants to account, ending their abuse of power and making them responsible for their actions, his campaign says.

The US Department of Justice antitrust lawsuit against Google is the biggest in a generation.

Joe Biden will hold America’s tech giants to account, ending their abuse of power and making them responsible for their actions, his campaign says.

“Many technology giants and their executives have not only abused their power, but misled the American people, damaged our democracy and evaded any form of responsibility,” Biden campaign spokesman Matt Hill said this week. “That ends with a President Biden.”

The comments are the most forthright made by the Biden campaign on Big Tech since his election victory. They give a clear indication that the incoming US president ­intends to take a tougher stand against a raft of tech giants such as Facebook, Google and Twitter.

Although Mr Biden has criticised Big Tech companies previously for abuses of power, it had not been a dominant issue in the election campaign, leading to speculation about how he would deal with the issue.

US experts believe a Biden administration will not just continue, but will expand, the Department of Justice lawsuit against Alphabet, the parent company of Google, alleging abuse of marketpower to maintain an illegal monopoly.

Mr Biden is also expected to push to revoke a legal shield known as Section 230 that protects tech companies from lawsuits for hosting or removing misleading or harmful content.

The Obama administration, in which Mr Biden was vice-president, was seen to give Big Tech an easy ride, allowing it to pursue massive expansion with little oversight. But under the Trump ­administration the mood of Washington towards Big Tech soured as its unregulated power grew, swamping competition and distorting markets.

Companies such as Facebook and Twitter have also been exploited by foreign adversaries and others spreading misinformation.

Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden speaks at a drive-in event at the Lexington Technology Park in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on November 2. Picture: AFP

Congress has launched a series of investigations into curtailing the power of Big Tech and making it more responsible for its actions.

The Department of Justice antitrust lawsuit against Google, the biggest in a generation, alleges the company is pursuing an “anticompetitive strategy, crippling the competitive process, reducing consumer choice, and stifling innovation”.

Mr Biden’s most expansive comments on Big Tech were made in a January interview with The New York Times where he conceded that the Obama administration was too gentle with the sector.

The now president-elect indicated he would be much tougher, describing some Silicon Valley tech executives as “righteous” and “arrogant” “little creeps” who had abused their power. “There’s an ­arrogance about it, an overwhelming arrogance that we are the ones. We can do what we want to do. I disagree,’ Mr Biden said

“Look, not everyone in the tech industry is a bad guy, and I’m not suggesting that. What I’m suggesting is that some of the things that are going on are simply wrong and require government regulation.”

Mr Biden has said he favours the US setting up tougher privacy standards for tech platforms.

“I’ve been of the view that not only should we be worrying about the concentration of power, we should be worried about the lack of privacy and them being exempt,’ he said.

The House of Representatives antitrust subcommittee recently published a 449-page report that labelled the big four tech companies — Apple, Amazon, Alphabet and Facebook — threats not just to consumers and rivals, but to democracy itself. “These firms have too much power, and that power must be reined in,” the ­report said. “Our economy and democracy are at stake.”

The Department of Justice’s antitrust lawsuit against Google sets up a major battle between Washington and Silicon Valley.

It says that Google used its murky business practices to capture almost 90 per cent of all search queries in the US and that this “grip on distribution” has stymied other search engines from competing.

“Ultimately it is consumers and advertisers that suffer from less choice, less innovation and less competitive advertising prices,” the lawsuit states.