Recent Big Tech News
Beasley Allen takes on Big Tech: In early June, Montgomery based law firm Beasley Allen filed lawsuits on behalf of eight plaintiffs across the United States against Facebook parent Meta Platforms for "exploiting young people for profit, employing addictive psychological tactics to increase the use of their product, and failing to protect young, vulnerable, and at-risk users." These lawsuits caught the attention of the national media from Breitbart and Fox Business to the Washington Post and Bloomberg. These eight lawsuits are eight more than Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall has filed against Big Tech. In September, 2021, AG Marshall did file a brief in support of Florida's Free Speech law. In 2020, Alabama's AG partnered with Facebook to combat online price gouging during the pandemic.
American Innovation and Choice Online Act: Minnesota Democrat Senator Amy Klobuchar is leading the charge for this bi-partisan bill. Of the multiple Big Tech bills in Congress, this one is currently getting most of the attention. The bill has twelve co-sponsors in the U.S. Senate with six Republicans and six Democrats. In January, the bill was voted out of the Senate Judiciary Committee by a vote of 16 to 6, with eleven Democrats and five Republicans voting to advance the bill. The bill was revised in May, 2022 in the form of a substitute. The U.S. House companion bill has forty-four co-sponsors with thirty-five Democrats and nine Republicans. The House bill was voted out of the House Judiciary Committee in June, 2021. Proponents of the bill say the bill fairly protects small businesses from "self‐preferencing" by Big Tech. Opponents of the bill claim that the legislation could bring unintended consequences and provide too much power to the Federal Trade Commission.
Comments