Biting the Hand That Supports Them Dept.

(Image from Adweek)

This is an unexpected move by Democrats with only a month to go before the November elections:

House Democrats to Call for Big Tech Breakups [bold added]

Democratic lawmakers are expected to call on Congress to blunt the power of big technology companies, possibly through forced separation of online platforms, as a House panel concludes its Big Tech probe.

The House Antitrust Subcommittee is nearing completion of a report wrapping up its 15-month investigation of Alphabet Inc.’s Google, Apple Inc., Amazon.com Inc., and Facebook Inc. The report follows the committee’s collection of more than one million documents from the companies and competitors, as well as a July hearing with CEOs of the four tech giants.

Rep. David Cicilline (D., R.I.), who chairs the subcommittee, has indicated the panel is poised to recommend significant measures targeting Big Tech’s power, including requiring owners of huge technology platforms to separate those platforms from other businesses.

The largest tech companies (Amazon, Facebook, Google, Microsoft) distribute their funds to Democrats and Republicans fairly evenly (Apple doesn't have a PAC). However, their employees contribute heavily--over 90%--to Democrats.

(BTW, you can bet your bottom dollar that, because donor data is public information, there's some workplace coercion--"Hey, Joe, how come you didn't donate to Biden? Are you a racist?" If you don't toe the line in Silicon Valley, you could be blacklisted for wrongthink like James Damore or Brendan Eich.)

There is a bona fide discussion to be held over the power Big Tech holds over our lives, but it's not at all clear that consumers are worse off, say, because Amazon gives us more selection and lower prices than brick-and-mortar stores, or that Facebook shows us ads that are likely to interest us as opposed to burying us in dreck like traditional TV.

IMHO, the Democrats have judged that Big Tech will support them no matter what and are throwing a bone to Progressives that believe: 1) Tech has made too many people extraordinarily wealthy--exacerbating inequality is bad, despite making every individual better off; and 2) concentrations of power other than government cannot be allowed.

“Everything within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state.” - Anne Applebaum, on totalitarianism in 20th century Eastern Europe.