Senator Josh Hawley (Republican – Missouri) sat down for a virtual interview with the Washington Post to discuss the common ground he hopes he can find with Democrats as well as his issues with Big Tech.
Though Hawley has since accepted Joe Biden as the legitimate president, he remains a longtime ally of former President Donald Trump and shared many of his criticisms of Big Tech. Hawley said during the interview that he believes Big Tech has too much power and needs to be dismantled. “To me the issue about [Big Tech] is an issue about ordinary Americans and the control [Big Tech has over] [them].”
On Wednesday, May 5, the Oversight Board, which reviews key decisions made by Facebook on its platform, upheld a ban on Trump from the website, but stated the company’s management will need to review its decision within six months.
Hawley clarified Tuesday that the issues do not stop with free speech, but carries to how they handle consumer data and information. He also implied that Big Tech may restrict consumers’ access to news and the sharing of information.
In terms of antitrust policy, Hawley stated that he would advocate for a policy that banned mergers and acquisitions for corporations that have a market cap of 100 billion or more. He also advocated for abandoning the Consumer Welfare Standard, a metric that focuses the scope of an antitrust hearing on the effects that practices have on consumers. Hawley criticized the metric as too narrow and stated that he believed it was deferential to monopolies.
“We need to have a debate about how our courts have been enforcing the law. We need to have a debate about how we can cut these monopoly corporations down,” Hawley said.
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