For Immediate Release
June 24, 2021
Contact: press@accountabletech.org

Accountable Tech co-founder Jesse Lehrich released the following statement Thursday morning as the House Judiciary Committee recessed after advancing five historic bills to rein in Big Tech with strong bipartisan support:

“This is truly a watershed moment. Even a few years ago, the prospect of such bold structural reforms to rein in the unchecked power of Big Tech was anathema. But the House Judiciary Committee just advanced five separate bipartisan bills that would break the Silicon Valley stranglehold on American commerce, consumers, and communications.

For too long, these monopolists have exploited their market dominance and our century-old antitrust laws to acquire and kill competitors; to crush small businesses and news publishers; to surveil and profile consumers; to manipulate public discourse and undermine democracy.

This historic victory demonstrates that all the lobbyists in the world are no match for the grassroots momentum to curtail Big Tech’s wide-ranging abuses of power. Needless to say, there is much work left to do, but we just took five giant steps toward ending this era of impunity.”

Background:

The bipartisan bills already passed would…

• Embolden the underfunded agencies (passed 29-12) and state Attorneys General (passed 34-7)  tasked with defending consumers from Big Tech’s abuses

• Empower users to take their data and leave dominant platforms and interact with them through competitors (passed 25-19)

• Prevent Big Tech monopolists from buying up potential competitors (passed 24-17)

• Ban these gatekeepers from self-dealing and rigging marketplaces (passed 24-20)

At 11:00am ET, the House Judiciary Committee will return to consider the Ending Platform Monopolies Act, which would require dominant platforms to sell off lines of business that create inherent conflicts of interest.

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