Bidens 100 days in office: His stance towards Big Tech, antitrust policies

US
President Joe Biden completed 100 days in office on April 29. After assuming the
charge, he adopted a tough stance against the Big tech companies, such as
Apple, Google, Facebook and Amazon and in the favour of antitrust policies. This
is evident by his selection of two persons to key positions.

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One of them
is Lina Khan, whom he chose as his nominee to the
Federal Trade Commission. Khan previously served in the House Judiciary
subcommittee on antitrust and helped compile a report against the four
big tech companies, accusing them of monopoly. She had also suggested an
overhaul of the country’s antitrust laws.

As a student at the Yale University, she
wrote an article ‘Amazon’s Antitrust Paradox’ in which she argued how the
e-commerce giant’s predatory pricing, cloaked in the garb of low prices for
consumer, cut off legitimate competitors from the market.

Other than Khan, Biden roped in Columbia
University law professor Tim Wu to
the National Economic Council as a special assistant to the president for
technology and competition policy. He is the one who coined the term ‘net
neutrality’ that basically means that internet service providers must not slow or speed up services, based on users, content, website
etc.

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In his 2018 book, ‘The Curse of Bigness:
Antitrust in the New Gilded Age’, he argued breaking up tech giants in
order to give a boost to competition.

Biden’s take on big tech giants is also
evident from the fact that he recently supported Amazon workers‘ attempt to
unionise.

During his election campaign, the then
White House hopeful had said that breaking Big Tech such as Facebook was
“something we should take a really hard look at,” Reuters reported. However,
he added that it was “premature” to make a final judgment.

Last
year, Biden also told The New York Times that Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which grants
social media platforms immunity for almost all content posted on them,
 immunity
for almost all content posted on them