During the presidential campaign, candidate Joe Biden was mostly silent about so-called Big Tech.
When Biden becomes the next U.S. president on January 20, Silicon Valley will be watching to see how the new administration approaches tech issues.
How might the relationship between Washington and Silicon Valley unfold?
Linda Moore, president and chief executive of TechNet, a bipartisan network of technology firm CEOs and executives, said that with a new administration, there is typically an opportunity to educate officials on the tech industry.
But with the Biden administration, “we will have people who are very knowledgeable and have deep experience on these issues and have well-thought-out views on them,” she said.
Broadband bill
Most likely, the first thing on Biden’s tech agenda will dovetail with his economic policy: a massive increase in federal broadband spending to get more Americans online, particularly in rural communities. The president-elect is reportedly in talks with Democratic leaders on a broadband bill.
The need is urgent, said Gigi Sohn, a distinguished fellow at Georgetown Law Institute for Technology, Law & Policy and a former senior official with President Barack Obama’s Federal Communications Commission.
“In rural America, there is not even a network to connect to,” Sohn said.
The new administration should also address “the problem, which is frankly much bigger, of people can't afford broadband because it's too expensive,” she said.
Beyond that, it is unclear which tech issues a Biden administration will focus on. The tech industry and its critics are paying close attention to whom the president-elect nominates for key roles at federal agencies such as the Federal Trade Commission, the Department of Justice and the Federal Communications Commission, all of which could have oversight over technology and telecommunications firms.
Competition
Under President Donald Trump, the Department of Justice has sued Alphabet’s Google for allegedly violating antitrust law, focusing on its search services.
In December, the Trump administration’s FTC, in concert with a coalition of 48 state attorneys general, filed suits accusing Facebook of abusing its power when it bought smaller rivals Instagram and Whatsapp. Facebook called the suit “revisionist history.”
The FTC also required nine tech firms, including Amazon and Google-owned YouTube, to share information about how they collect and use data from users.
Charlotte Slaiman, competition policy director at Public Knowledge, a nonprofit advocacy group, said she hopes Biden will expand scrutiny of tech giants such as Google over anti-competitive business practices.
“I think it's clear that when (former) Vice President Biden becomes president, he will be really interested in trying to tackle these difficult tech issues,” she said. “We are particularly concerned about competition and the power of the largest tech platforms, and I am looking forward to more attention on those issues in the Biden administration.”
For its part, the tech industry welcomes questions about its businesses, something that comes with success, said Moore of TechNet.
“These companies have gotten so big because they give customers what they want,” she said. “I think that these companies are prepared for that kind of scrutiny, and I'm sure that they will be very forthcoming and going over all their business practices.”
Online speech
When it comes to online speech, both Democratic and Republican lawmakers have looked to revamp a federal law that protects companies from liability in civil cases over content that users publish on their sites.
The Biden campaign looked at social media and Facebook in particular as an “existential threat,” said Jesse Lehrich, co-founder and senior adviser at Accountable Tech, a nonprofit that focuses on social media.
“Even though Biden himself and the people he's named might not scream ‘tech policy’ as a priority,” he said, “I think that that will be built out in the coming weeks and months.”
Moore said her members want to protect the federal law. In recent years, online platforms have been doing more to monitor and take down speech that violates their terms of service, she said.
“We definitely believe that our platforms cannot be held responsible for what other people post that they have no ability to really curb,” she said.
Digital privacy
Many states have passed or tried to pass privacy laws, creating a patchwork of rules that can be confusing to consumers and businesses alike. Tech critics and tech leaders are pushing for a national privacy bill that would create a standard for digital privacy.
