Today, the House Judiciary Committee marked up a bipartisan package of bills to invigorate competition against dominant digital platforms. The six bills are led by Reps. David Cicilline (D-RI), Mary Gay Scanlon (D-PA), Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), Pramila Jayapal (D-WA), Joe Neguse (D-CO), and Ken Buck (R-CO).
For the five most powerful platform companies, the bills prohibit anticompetitive discrimination; enable users to communicate across platforms; block dominant digital platforms from buying potential competitors; and authorize the FTC and DOJ to break up vertically integrated behemoths if they determine there’s a conflict of interest. The package also increases funding to the Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Justice and allows state attorneys general more power over where their cases are heard.
Public Knowledge urges Congress to pass these bills to create real solutions to the digital platform competition problems described by the House Antitrust Subcommittee’s landmark report last year.
The following can be attributed to Charlotte Slaiman, Competition Policy Director at Public Knowledge:
“Today is a great day to be a small business, would-be innovator, or an American consumer. The bipartisan package to rein in Big Tech has cleared its first major hurdle. Given the bipartisan votes in favor of these bills, the full House should immediately take up these bills to promote a more fair and open online economy.”
View our latest fact sheet for more information on how this bipartisan antitrust package promotes competition in Big Tech.
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