Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen is testifying before a Senate subcommittee today.
Klobuchar said tech lobbyists "throwing a bunch of money around this town" were preventing action.
The hearing is focusing on Facebook's content moderation policies and impact on young users.
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Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota said on Tuesday that lawmakers haven't taken any meaningful action against Facebook because of the power of well-heeled lobbyists from the company and other big tech firms in Washington.
The Minnesota Democrat made the remarks at a Senate hearing where Frances Haugen — a former product manager at Facebook who recently revealed her identity as the whistleblower that has helped expose the company's harmful effect on young users — was testifying and taking questions from senators of both parties. The hearing also comes the day after an hours-long outage of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, all of which are owned by the company.
"I think the time has come for action, and I think you are the catalyst for that action," Klobuchar told Haugen.
She went on to say that Facebook is one of several "dominant platforms" that act like "bullies in the neighborhood" in order to prevent meaningful regulation.
"You have said privacy legislation is not enough — I completely agree with you," Klobuchar said to Haugen. "But I think you know, we have not done anything to update our privacy laws in this country, our federal privacy laws. Nothing. Zilch, in any major way."
"Why? Because there are lobbyists around every single corner of this building that have been hired by the tech industry," she continued. "We have done nothing when it comes to making the algorithms more transparent, allowing for the university research that you referred to. Why? Because Facebook and the other tech companies are throwing a bunch of money around this town, and people are listening to them."
Klobuchar sought to link the issues with Facebook's content moderation practices with a broader antitrust conversation about the company, and whether or not the tech giant should be broken up. Earlier this year, the senator published a book on anti-trust legislation.
"We are on a bipartisan basis working in the antitrust subcommittee to get something done on consolidation, which you understand allows the dominant platforms to control all of this like the bullies in the neighborhood: buy out the companies that maybe could've competed with them and added the bells and whistles," Klobuchar said.
"So the time for action is now," she concluded.
—ABC News Politics (@ABCPolitics) October 5, 2021
tablair on October 5th, 2021 at 18:21 UTC »
The biggest reason Washington hasn’t done anything to regulate big tech has more to do with lawmakers having zero understanding of what big tech a actually does. Watching the hearings on big tech it’s amazing how many questions are just utterly foolish.
If we want to regulate tech, we need people who are tech literate. For example, how can we grapple with Facebook’s algorithm optimizing for engagement when lawmakers fundamentally don’t even understand what an algorithm is, let alone having written one themselves. When it comes to medical science, we have a surgeon general or a bunch of three-letter agencies (FDA, CDC, EPA, etc) that hire actual experts to help make policy. When it comes to tech, we have a bunch of 80-year-old elected officials ignorantly trying to make comparisons between new technology and things they understand. It’s simply not going to work.
Either tech will remain a Wild West where the companies decide their own rules or we’re going to need government to have its own tech groups that can make recommendations on the necessary tech regulations. Because there are (maybe) a handful of lawmakers with even the slightest understanding of what’s going on in tech. The rest just add confusion to the debate.
MyPasswordIs222222 on October 5th, 2021 at 17:47 UTC »
And because Congress has no idea how any of it works.
I'll never forget Mark's response to the question, 'how do you make money'?
His response? 'We sell advertising'.
That was it.
And Congress accepted the answer.
urthedumbestfuck on October 5th, 2021 at 15:59 UTC »
It's bribery, but John Roberts got his job as a result of bribery so his tiny ego demands that he consider it free speech so he doesn't have to see a fraud every time he looks in the mirror.