Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) are collaborating on legislation to establish a new agency that would have the authority to regulate tech giants.
The bipartisan Digital Consumer Protection Commission Act, unveiled Thursday, would create an agency charged with overseeing Meta, Google, Amazon, and other major tech companies and aiming to promote industry competition and online consumer privacy.
The commission would work alongside the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and Department of Justice (DOJ), which currently function as antitrust enforcers, according to the bill.
The legislation would also implement regulations that require “dominant platforms” to be licensed and allow for licenses to be revoked for repeated anticompetitive and anti-consumer conduct violations.
The bill represents the latest effort from Congress to rein in the power of tech giants.
Last year, two bipartisan antitrust reform bills made progress in the Senate Judiciary Committee — the American Innovation and Choice Online Act and the Open App markets Act — but failed to advance to a floor vote. Companion bills that advanced in the House Judiciary Committee also failed to reach a full floor vote.
Warren and Graham’s proposal seeks to address tech regulation on a broader scale by creating a commission specifically tasked with overseeing the booming industry.
The legislation would also grant the new commission oversight of how to respond to emerging risks, including those posed by artificial intelligence (AI) — an area where lawmakers and regulators have been scrambling to establish rules.
“Enough is enough. It’s time to rein in Big Tech. And we can’t do it with a law that only nibbles around the edges of the problem,” the senators wrote in a joint op-ed published in The New York Times on Thursday.
“Piecemeal efforts to stop abusive and dangerous practices have failed. Congress is too slow, it lacks the tech expertise, and the army of Big Tech lobbyists can pick off individual efforts easier than shooting fish in a barrel. Meaningful change — the change worth engaging every member of Congress to fight for — is structural,” they added.
Lawmakers have long faced difficulties in pursuing tech reforms, as the industry has launched extensive lobbying campaigns targeting congressional legislation.
Meanwhile, Republican leaders in the House have focused their tech agenda on content moderation battles rather than advancing bills aimed at curbing the market power of Big Tech.
For Warren, her collaboration with Graham is the second time the progressive firebrand has recently joined forces with a colleague across the aisle. Last month, Warren partnered with Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio) to introduce a bill that targets failed bank executives with stricter penalties.
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