Sen. Amy Klobuchar says in a recent MinnPost news story that her American Innovation and Choice Online Act (AICOA) puts “common sense rules of the road in place to lower costs for consumers and help small businesses compete.”
The truth is that S.2992 would have negative real-world consequences for American consumers and small businesses. This anti-tech bill would threaten American innovation and progress at a time when we can least afford it.
An anti-innovation vendetta fails to address the rising economic anxiety amid soaring inflation and record gas prices affecting so many Minnesotans. That’s why I and so many others oppose this bill. Instead of providing much-needed help to working Americans, it would add unnecessary and highly burdensome regulations that will harm our country’s economy and national security.
Don’t just take my word for it. In a recent survey of 1,691 likely voters, Americans overwhelmingly want politicians to address issues related to the cost of living, national security and health care. It’s no surprise that regulating tech companies is significantly lower on the list of voter priorities.
Likely voters also believe tech companies make their lives easier and more convenient. That’s certainly the case for those of us who used cutting-edge tech tools during the pandemic and thereafter. It’s also true for Minnesotan farmers who rely on technology to increase production and better conserve the environment and vital resources. Amid unprecedented challenges, technology has proven to be a critical tool.
Technology powers Minnesota’s economy and small businesses. According to a 2021 study, our state’s technology sector comprises more than 245,500 individuals, delivering an estimated $31.8 billion economic impact on our economy. Comprising over 8% of the state’s total workforce, the estimated median wage for technology workers in Minnesota is 73% higher than the median wage for all occupations in the state. During the COVID-19 pandemic, technology was a lifeline for Minnesota small businesses, who increased their use of digital tools by a whopping 62 percent.
By passing the AICOA, we’d be increasing bureaucratic red tape and preventing certain future startup acquisitions by technology companies. Notably, this legislation compounds structural issues in our economy by potentially disincentivizing future investment in tech startups. At a time when small businesses, farmers and everyday people are relying more and more on technology innovations, the last thing we can afford is a stifling of investment and growth.
[image_caption]Roz Peterson[/image_caption]
There are other concerns with Klobuchar’s bill from her fellow Democratic Senate colleagues surrounding content moderation. In a recent letter, Sens. Brian Schatz of Hawaii, Ron Wyden of Oregon, Ben Ray Luján of New Mexico, and Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin shared with Sen. Klobuchar that “unless it is clarified, the bill would supercharge harmful content online and make it more difficult to combat.” At a time when political polarization is dangerously high, the last thing America can afford is more online disinformation.
In sum, Klobuchar’s proposed legislation would hurt consumers and small business owners as they grapple with putting gas in their cars and food on their tables. It will also further degrade our political discourse by taking away content moderation tools from large tech companies at a time when these tools are necessary. Instead of targeting popular tech services that support Minnesotans from Worthington to Warroad, our leaders in Congress should listen to voters’ concerns and act accordingly.
Roz Peterson, Lakeville, is a former state representative and the owner of a small business.
“Instead of providing much-needed help to working Americans, it would add unnecessary and highly burdensome regulations that will harm our country’s economy and national security. Don’t just take my word for it.”
I won’t, largely because you point to nothing in the legislation that would do what you claim it would do. All I see in this posting is a catalog of people who think it is a bad bill but nothing to say why it is so bad.
Exactly!!!
Ms. Peterson should consider a run for the US Congress because she obviously never read the bill. Putting additional regulation on “covered platforms” with over 50 million users per month is in keeping with previous legislation that history has shown was the right step at the time of passage: breaking up oil monopolies in 1911:
During the 1880s, Standard Oil divided the United States into 11 districts for selling kerosene and other oil products. To stimulate demand, the company sold or even gave away cheap lamps and stoves. It also created phony companies that appeared to compete with Standard Oil, their real owner.
And ATT telecommunications breakup in 1984:
AT&T grew by relentlessly gobbling up rival companies and eventually struck a deal with the government to make its monopolization legal in exchange for universal service (known as the Kingsbury Commitment). As a monopolist, AT&T’s unilateral decisions dictated the way people communicated. The company exerted extraordinary influence over public debate and used its influence to argue that its monopoly was in the public interest.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/02/what-att-breakup-teaches-us-about-big-tech-breakup
“Today, Big Tech is reenacting the battle of the AT&T of yore. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg assertion that his company’s dominance is the only means to compete with China is a repeat of AT&T’s attempt to use national security to bypass competition concerns. Similarly, Facebook’s recent change of heart on whether Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act should be gutted is an effort to appease policymakers looking to scrutinize the company’s dominance. Not coincidentally, Section 230 is the lifeblood of every would-be competitor to Facebook. In trading 230 in for policy concessions, Facebook both escapes a breakup and salts the earth against the growth of any new competitors to become the regulated monopoly that remains.”
And just in case Ms. Peterson does not have access to Google, here you go on the bill she did not read:
(1) preference the products, services, or lines of business of the covered platform operator over those of another business user on the covered platform in a manner that would materially harm competition;
(2) limit the ability of the products, services, or lines of business of another business user to compete on the covered platform relative to the products, services, or lines of business of the covered platform operator in a manner that would materially harm competition;
(3) discriminate in the application or enforcement of the terms of service of the covered platform among similarly situated business users in a manner that would materially harm competition;
(4) materially restrict, impede, or unreasonably delay the capacity of a business user to access or interoperate with the same platform, operating system, or hardware or software features that are available to the products, services, or lines of business of the covered platform operator that compete or would compete with products or services offered by business users on the covered platform;
(5) condition access to the covered platform or preferred status or placement on the covered platform on the purchase or use of other products or services offered by the covered platform operator that are not part of or intrinsic to the covered platform;
https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/senate-bill/2992/text
Gee, one would think one might be in position to hold influence over such topics were they able to win election to office, something our humble author seems to have had an issue with. It would seem your ideas of what’s popular didn’t find much favor Ms. Peterson, strange that you’d continue on with the same rhetoric that lead to your expulsion from the state’s body politic, but hey, I guess when one thinks their opinions important, no amount of hubris is too much.
There’s so much cherry-picking in this article that you would need a conveyor belt to hold it all. The bill’s basics are not mentioned since people would likely agree it’s a good idea: Republican and Democratic senators co-sponsor a bill to limit the online marketplace power of Google, Facebook, Amazon and Apple.
The inflation and gas price arguments are irrelevant to this bill, since both of those are mostly due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine and all the shock waves it generated. And this article in Vox shows that local and state NIMBY efforts have equally hindered the lowering of energy, transportation and housing costs (https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/23284170/inflation-prices-housing-transportation-local) as much as federal policy.
Google and Facebook have a monopoly on online advertising, with paid sponsorship corrupting their searches. Amazon is now trending the same way, only worse in that many of the paid ads are for counterfeit products. Amazon got their start in selling books, and now their market is flooded with counterfeit books (https://nypost.com/2022/07/31/pirated-books-thrive-on-amazon-authors-say-web-giant-ignores-fraud/), especially in the technical sector. Amazon is either letting the counterfeiters buy their way to the top of the sales list or ignoring their lawbreaking efforts.
Apple uses its market power in more subtle ways, like restricting repairs or charging a lot for software companies to sell apps in their stores. There are also a number of scams in their App Store, negating an argument that their store restrictions promote safety.
Many people are, in fact, in favor of this bill, but there is a massive lobbying astroturf effort against it, which this article is a part of. Which of the four companies, or their lobbying firms, encouraged the writer to pen this article?
Thanks for the thoughtful and informed comments. This piece was long on complaint and sky is falling; and short on quantified points.
Former Republican legislator – please routinely identify political party. She apparently thinks that social media market monopolies are not a public concern.
Elected officials do not have to limit their legislation to big issues with a majority of the public. Republicans who propose taking away a woman’s right to chose certainly have no interest on what the majority thinks about the issue.
What m are Republicans proposing on big issues like inflation. Maybe next time she will talk about what Republicans support other than blocking legislation and providing extra privileges for the rich.
“This anti-tech bill would threaten American innovation and progress at a time when we can least afford it.”
At the risk of repeating others’ points, how, exactly, does this bill threaten american innovation?
Similarly, how, exactly, is it “[a]n anti-innovation vendetta”?
Several of my friends, who are very much on the conservative side, strongly feel tech companies need to be reined in significantly. It is something we agree on. Ms. Peterson says the main concerns of people are inflation, gas prices and national security. My major concerns are: Climate Change, affordable health care, income inequality, getting the money out of politics, affordable housing, polarization, the attack on elections, and false information. As for inflation and gas prices, I have some control of that – I use less gas, and have cut back on spending. It helps to know that in other countries, gas prices and inflation are much worse. I do worry about national security with the trend towards right wing militias, and the demand for assault weapons.
I am curious to know what business Ms. Peterson owns, and it’s relationship with tech companies.
Any time a writer strictly avoids telling us specifics about what’s so “bad” about something, as here, it’s clear that we have an ideological screed going on, not an argument for reasoning folks. This is a sadly transparent effort to NOT let us in on the fact that Klobuchar’s carefully-researched bill will help the consumer, and especially the small business people who are trying to get a foothold in businesses controlled by behemoths like Google, Amazon, and Facebook and their ilk.
Regulation works.
As to her screech about inflation: We might tell the author to check on gas prices: they’re way down by now, having fallen steadily for the past four or five weeks, and still going down.
If I wanted to read content-free dreck, I’d subscribe to the StarTribune. For some reason, Minnpost seems to be choosing content which favors engagement (i.e., comment wars) over analysis or reporting.
The point of this piece is typical Republican propaganda using the sort of doublespeak and glittering generalities made famous by Newt Gingrich. Thus, Peterson accuses Klobuchar, and by extension Democrats who support breaking up tech monopolies like Google, Amazon and Facebook, are in favor of “unnecessary and highly burdensome regulations”and creating “bureaucratic red tape”; they are anti-business, or,in a more up-to-date version, “anti-tech” and therefore anti”cutting edge technology”; they are “disincentivizing future investment in tech startups” and “stifling . . . investment and growth.”
The American Innovation and Choice Online Act seems to be more of an antitrust bill than any sort of regulatory bill. It strikes me as being in line with the kind of proposals she had previously made and discusses in her recent book: “Antitrust:Taking on Monopoly Power from the Gilded Age to the Digital Age.” From my reading of the Act, linked to by Mr. Blaise, this law wouldn’t create any new regulations or bureaucracy. If there is language which needs to be clarified, as some Senators seem to think, then it should be clarified. Otherwise, Peterson’s ignorance about this law and her topic and the fact it would probably do the opposite of what she thinks or has been told, should provide good reasons for Congress to enact it ASAP.
Clearly somebody thinks that splashing a bunch of trendy Republican catch-phrases onto a keyboard constitutes an a article of some kind. “Anti-innovation vendetta?” It’s funny how a political Party that’s so completely bereft of any original ideas or creative solutions of any kind fancies itself to be the champions of innovation. Whatever.
I have to ding Minnpost for this one. If you MUST provide some kind of “balance” with Republican contributions now and then, at least find something that actually says something about something and provides some rationale of some kind. Protecting tech companies from regulation isn’t on a list of priorities for 1200 surveyed potential voters, but it’s on Peterson’s list of things complain about… OK then.
The Congress just passed the anti inflation act that will actually make inflation worse. You are not allowed to call it a recession because that would be a bad thing for Lefties. Politicians have lined their pockets off shoring our manufacturing jobs for 30 years, thank you globalists. When government gets involved in trying to “fix” problems, red tape grows and it gets worse. There hasn’t been a bill written by actual elected officials in years, special interest groups write them.
Other than that, I’m sure this bill championed by Klobuchar, a lawyer with no business background, will fix everything. They need to pass the “we will get out of the way” bill and try letting small businesses do their thing.
Why? When did small business become less corrupt, incompetent, and myopic than the conservatism many of its members support? Anything touched by conservatism and it’s disastrous view of the world is by its very nature suspect, and should be subject to every form of restraint available, lest it metastasize into the feudalistic, totalitarian dystopia conservatism invariably strives toward.
Not to worry Joe.
One of Chuck Schumer’s daughter is a lobbyist for Amazon and the other is a manager at Facebook. This bill will never see the light of day if Big Daddy Chuck ever wants to celebrate another Father’s Day with his children and their gifted jobs.
“Jessica Schumer is a registered lobbyist at Amazon, according to New York state records. Alison Schumer works at Facebook as a product marketing ”
https://nypost.com/2022/01/18/schumers-daughters-work-for-amazon-facebook-as-he-holds-power-over-antitrust-bill/
In other words, you have no idea what’s in the bill, but [generalized rant] and you don’t like the bill because Senator Klobuchar sponsored it.
Always a delight to read such thoughtful, insightful analysis.
I know I’m late to the party, but I can’t believe how many words can be cobbled together and manage to provide pretty much zero information. I kept waiting for some data, or some little sliver of reason or rationale. Something to somehow link Klobuchar to “anti-technology” anything. Absolutely nothing. The closest she comes is to essentially say that a poll tells us that the public uses social media. No kidding? I hadn’t noticed. The rest was, well…a lot of words. And that’s all.
Let the commenter who doesn’t use Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Apple cast the first stone against them.