Internet giants, once above the fray, on the defensive

WASHINGTON: Internet giants, including Alphabet’s Google and Facebook, are moving to compromise on several major policy issues as they adjust to an abrupt shift in the political winds in Washington.

Just last week, the U.S. Senate took a big step toward advancing legislation that would partially strip away the internet industry’s bedrock legal protection, a 1996 law that shields companies from liability for the activities of their users.

At the same time, Democratic senators are writing legislation that would create new disclosure rules for online political ads after Facebook this month revealed that suspected Russian trolls purchased more than $100,000 worth of divisive ads on its platform during the 2016 election cycle. The U.S. Federal Election Commission is considering bringing in Facebook and other tech firms for a public hearing.

Unlike in Europe, where they have faced a bevy of new rules and billion-dollar fines, internet giants have avoided virtually all types of government regulation in the United States, even as their market power continues to grow. Amazon, for example, controls more than a third of U.S. online commerce, while Google and Facebook combined account for more than sixty percent of the U.S. digital ad market.

Internet firms have from their inception urged U.S. politicians in both parties to treat their industry as a nascent sector in need of unique protections. These firms enjoyed an especially close relationship with the Democratic administration of former President Barack Obama, which saw several officials go to work for Google upon leaving the White House.

But some Democrats, still bitter over Russia’s alleged meddling in the 2016 election, are now expressing alarm at the industry’s power. Virginia Senator Mark Warner, the vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, this month compared political ads on social media to the “wild, wild West” and is working on legislation to require more disclosure.

On the Republican side, President Donald Trump has been hostile to the tech industry in many of his public remarks. Google and Facebook have been repeatedly attacked from the right for alleged liberal bias and a globalist outlook.