Assuming that the Democratic Party did not win the majority of seats in the Senate and the House of Representatives, Biden will be in power hard when Mitch McConnell continues to control and control the Senate. One of the many priorities that the Biden government needs to deal with is the Internet economy and information ecosystem controlled by a few large enterprises.
Under a divided government, how many possible problems of science and technology policy can be solved? According to insiders, before Joe Biden won the presidential election, his staff had begun to contact with advocates and executives in the technology industry to consult them on how the new government should reshape Internet and telecommunications policies.
Compared with the situation in the past four years, the goodwill of Biden's campaign team means a major reversal. In the past four years, the Trump government has ostensibly made friends with executives in the technology industry, but has always ignored their suggestions on key issues, such as trade and immigration policies.
Biden's victory seemed to reassure employees in the entire technology industry. They have always sided with the Democratic candidate in the election.
For the leaders in the technology industry, the Biden team contacted them early to show their hope for the return of systematic policy making, which relies on consensus building in the industry. In contrast, the policies of the Trump administration often seem more like a temporary initiative, sometimes more like deliberately antagonizing companies the president hates or favoring companies he likes.
There are many examples of this. One of the most famous is, Amazon Accusing Trump of improperly urging the Pentagon to award a $10 billion cloud computing contract Microsoft , not Amazon Web Services (AWS). Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, is also the owner of the Washington Post, and Trump has always claimed that the Washington Post's report on its government is biased.
In the eyes of leaders in the technology industry, an increasingly divided government seems to bring a sense of collective relief. The situation that the Democratic Party controls the President and the House of Representatives while the Republican Party controls the Senate means that the hope of thoroughly reforming the anti-monopoly law will be increasingly dim. Once the reform is carried out, technology companies may have to adjust their business operations.
However, Google 、 Facebook And other large technology companies are not completely out of danger. If Biden is elected as the new president, these large technology companies are expected to remain the targets of anti-monopoly law enforcers. According to lawyers, lobbyists and former government officials, Biden has launched a number of investigations and legal proceedings against these large technology companies.
"If Biden wins, the biggest loser is surely Donald Trump, and the second biggest loser is the technology industry. ” Reed Hand said. He served as chairman of the Federal Communications Commission during Bill Clinton's administration. Before that, Han De worked in the field of anti-monopoly law.
Hand said, Under the Biden administration, "the possibility of splitting Facebook is very high". Facebook may be forced to sell Instagram. As stated in a recent report issued by the Anti monopoly Committee of the House of Representatives, antitrust officials may think that Facebook's acquisition of Instagram is to prevent the image and video sharing platform from becoming its direct competitor in the future.
However, this situation may not be certain. Antitrust experts remind that the threshold for splitting companies is very high. Twenty years ago, the Court of Appeal rejected the federal judge's decision to split Microsoft. Harry Fister, a law professor at New York University, said: "It is theoretically possible to split large technology companies, but it is difficult to do so in practice."
We summarized the following five key policy areas that may change significantly under the Biden administration and have a lasting impact on the technology industry.
Antitrust
Both the Democratic Party and the Republican Party widely agree to strengthen anti-monopoly law enforcement on large technology companies. The anti-monopoly officials of the Ministry of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission are professionals, so they can be free from political interference to a certain extent. Like the Trump government, the Biden government is likely to urge antitrust agencies to actively initiate antitrust litigation.
The Ministry of Justice has filed an antitrust lawsuit against Google for its online search engine business and partner transactions. The Democratic State Attorney General who has not yet joined the case is likely to play a greater role in the Biden administration. After Biden wins, they will be more likely to join the case of the Ministry of Justice v. Google, and may also join other charges, including accusing Google of illegally using market influence to monopolize the digital advertising market. The Attorney General of the Democratic Party will also target Amazon Apple And Facebook and other potential judicial antitrust actions.
However, if the Republican Party continues to hold a majority in the Senate, the hope of the Democratic Party to amend the anti-monopoly law may be greatly reduced. Democrats had hoped to amend these laws to make it more difficult for dominant platforms such as Facebook or Google to acquire small companies. Democrats also want to make it easier to file antitrust lawsuits against companies. Although Republicans also approve of prosecuting large technology companies for abusing market power, they generally do not support substantial amendments to the existing anti-monopoly law.
The Ministry of Justice is not the only source of anti-monopoly law enforcement. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has enormous, almost unused power to rewrite competition law. However, without the approval of Congress, FTC can only issue provisions prohibiting the use of non competition clauses and binding arbitration clauses in user agreements. The thorny thing is that the term of office of FTC members is seven years, and they cannot be dismissed unless something happens. At present, the committee is composed of three Republicans and two Democrats, all of whom joined in 2018. This means that unless a Republican has to retire or return to the private sector, Biden will not be able to gain advantages and implement his own antitrust policy.
But the bigger question is what is Biden's "tough" antitrust policy on technology companies? Biden did not mention antitrust too much in his campaign. His informal advisory team includes both antitrust hawks and protectionists from large technology companies. It is noteworthy that, Which camp can exert more influence on the Biden government.
Strictly speaking, during Biden's administration, we can see whether the bold and radical anti-monopoly law enforcement and legislation for large technology companies are moderate, progressive and ineffective in the court. At present, there is no conclusion.
However, some political lobbyists in Washington are now saying, "The Biden government is obviously more tough than the Trump government in approving mergers and acquisitions of small companies by large technology companies."
A more stringent merger approval review also marks a significant difference between Biden and the last Democratic President Obama. The most controversial deals approved by the Obama administration include Facebook's acquisition of Instagram in 2012 and Facebook's acquisition of WhatsApp in 2014. Now it seems that these M&A transactions have laid the foundation for large technology companies to occupy a dominant position in the market in the future. The Obama administration has also been criticized for failing to stop these mergers and acquisitions.
Article 230
Biden has said that he would recommend that Congress repeal Article 230, which gives social media extensive legal immunity, allowing them to publish content and control it. But the Biden administration may not attack this provision as fiercely as the Trump administration. This year, Trump signed an executive order instructing the Ministry of Justice, the Ministry of Commerce, the Federal Communications Commission and the Federal Trade Commission to take measures to weaken the legal protection of science and technology platforms under this provision.
Biden is very likely to revoke Trump's executive order, or instruct various agencies to suspend the issue. Biden has served in the Senate for 36 years, so it is unlikely to agree with Trump's practice of using the power of federal agencies to break the power of Congress to sign laws. However, if Congress passes the amendment of Article 230, which is very likely, Biden will certainly not oppose the signing of the new provisions into effect.
"The two parties may reach agreement on some issues, thus weakening the legal protection provided by Article 230," said Bruce Merman, a political lobbyist. Melman also added that technology platforms may be forced to delete content related to illegal drug sales on their websites.
immigrant
Among all Trump's policies, the immigration policy is the most annoying to the technology industry. The Trump administration is making every effort to prevent foreign citizens from flowing into the United States. The technology industry, which is highly dependent on talents, is directly impacted. The Information Technology Industry Council (ITIC), a Washington based technology and trade organization, expects that Biden may revoke a series of immigration related administrative orders signed by Trump. In addition, the organization also believes that Biden may modify the non immigrant visa to better meet the needs of the labor market.
Jim Messina, an assistant of former President Barack Obama and consultant of current technology companies, said: "One of the first things Biden will do after being elected is to modify Trump's immigration policy. He will cancel the restrictions on H-1B visas, and the technology industry will warmly welcome him."
Biden may also support legislation such as the High tech Migrants Equity Act, which makes it easier for Silicon Valley to recruit information technology employees. In addition, it is said that the bill is particularly beneficial to a large number of Indian employees waiting for green cards to be issued. At present, the maximum number of green cards granted by the United States to employees in any other country is 10000. The new bill will remove the quota limit for each country and allow more Indian employees in the US technology industry to obtain green cards.
tax revenue
The most obvious difference between Biden and Trump is the way they treat taxes. Trump promoted the largest tax reform since the 1980s, reducing the corporate tax rate from 35% to 21%. Trump's tax reform also revised the personal identification rules, reducing the highest tax rate from 39.6% to 37%.
Trump's tax plan also doubled the amount of duty-free inheritance to $10 million for individuals and $20 million for couples. Biden plans to raise taxes on anyone earning more than $400000 and restore the estate tax to its original level. However, the Republican controlled Senate may prevent Biden from passing meaningful tax reform.
Online content audit and false information
Even if nothing happens at the legislative level, after Trump leaves the White House, the way the platform handles content review and how to judge review will change significantly. For social media - especially other preferred Facebook and Twitter ——Trump is a big trouble: when the President of the United States can be said to be the largest source and amplifier of hate speech and false information, how can you consistently implement platform rules against these contents?
In the first few years of Trump's administration, the two companies did not attach much importance to this issue, which also attracted a lot of criticism. However, in the past year, both platforms have made significant improvements. At the same time, the attacks on Facebook and Twitter by liberals and the technology field in the media also fully prove that they are eager to see who can cure Trump. Democrats' attitude towards Facebook will only be more harsh than Republicans' attitude towards Google. Part of the reason can be traced back to 2016, when Facebook failed to prevent Russian hackers on the platform from secretly interfering in the presidential election. As a result, Democrats have already complained about the social media giant. Recently, Biden's campaign team and other Democrats complained that Facebook failed to take more radical measures to manage the inflammatory and false statements released by Trump.
Biden also has his shortcomings, but he belongs to the category of other normal political figures in the United States. He doesn't tweet at 3:00 a.m. complaining about vote fraud. In this regard, it has reduced a lot of work pressure on social media platforms. To be clear, the false information of viral transmission has not disappeared. However, when this phenomenon has nothing to do with the President of the United States, everything is much easier; The decision-making of the platform will not be interfered by politics and will not be so concerned. (In view of what he has done, Trump, who is no longer the president, may be blocked by Twitter.)
Therefore, even if these companies do not make any changes from today, the problem of false information on the platform will be improved.
