Big Tech will soon have its turn in the barrel in the Republican majority House.
Though House Republicans hold a narrow 222-213 edge over Democrats in the chamber, GOP-led committees are in a position to investigate issues about which they’ve long raised concerns. Key among them is exploring how government has influenced social media platforms, like Twitter and Facebook, in their treatment of conservative content online.
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The first move in the party’s tech agenda is Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) chairing the newly formed Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government. The committee will have subpoena power and focus on many of the same issues that the “Twitter Files” exposed with their recent release of private correspondence conducted by various government agencies, White House staff, and members of Congress with the micro-blogging site. Those contested posts included COVID-19 vaccine skepticism, theories about the virus’s origin, news stories with potential political consequences, and others.
In defending the need to push back on these requests to social media companies from government officials, Jordan recently said on the House floor, “Americans are sick and tired of it.”
Jordan, the new chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, said, “We just want it to stop,” adding, “That’s what this committee is all about. And that’s what we’re going to focus on. That’s what we’re going to do.”
While the subcommittee’s hearings and resulting publicity may please many Republican voters, it remains unclear if the scrutinized government requests rise to the level of First Amendment violations or are just unseemly.
“To cross the line, the state must put so much pressure on the private entity to act a certain way that the entity’s choice to do so is, in effect, the state’s choice. That’s a high bar. I have not yet seen it crossed,” internet policy counsel Corbin Barthold of TechFreedom, a nonpartisan think tank in Washington, D.C., told the Washington Examiner.
In acknowledging the difference between undesirable and illegal, Barthold continued, “This is not to say that I approve of how the federal government has conducted itself.”
Jordan’s subcommittee could approve legislation that prevents some types of government efforts to influence content moderation by private social media platforms in the future.
“Congress might seek to regulate when government officials may ‘flag’ content for platforms. It could declare, for instance, that state agencies may continue flagging accounts operated by foreign agents but must stop flagging accounts that make controversial medical claims,” Barthold said. “Congress might also demand that the government log and disclose its interactions with private platforms.”
Jordan has already been working on legislation, along with Rep. James Comer (R-KY), the new chairman of the House Oversight Committee, and Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA), who just became chairwoman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. The Oversight Committee website describes the trio’s bill as taking aim at social media regulation excesses by members of President Joe Biden’s administration. Their proposal would prohibit “Biden Administration officials and federal bureaucrats from using their authority or influence to promote censorship of speech or pressure social media companies to censor speech.”
But passing any legislation on content moderation issues is an uphill battle for Republicans. Beyond a Democratic-controlled Senate and the threat of veto from a Democratic president, the two parties differ fundamentally on what changes they’d like to see to tech laws.
Democrats worry about what they call “dangerous misinformation” being left up to circulate online. Republicans fret that too much content, namely with a conservative bent, is being taken down online. While both parties are unhappy with the status quo, their criticisms are diametrically opposed, making a legislative solution unlikely. Change in either direction would mean the repeal or curtailing of the federal liability shield known as Section 230. Numerous bills to do just that were introduced last session, but none were passed into law.
House Republicans might not fare better on the other tech issues they’ve expressed interest in tackling. As many states take it upon themselves to regulate privacy online, Congress remains unable to pass a federal privacy law. Republicans are holding out for a business-friendly preemption of state legislation, and Democrats are unwilling to cut the plaintiffs’ bar out of any framework.
Proposals aimed at protecting children online suffer from similar party-line disagreements. And all but one antitrust bill failed in the last session. Even with high-profile op-eds from Biden and former Trump administration Attorney General William Barr, those competition proposals don’t seem more likely to pass in the current session.
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While fundamental policy differences stall tech legislation on Capitol Hill, the Federal Trade Commission is aggressively claiming rule-making authority to regulate the industry without Congress’s direction or permission. The Department of Justice is reported to be on the cusp of filing a new antitrust case targeting Google’s online ad business and a suit against Apple.
While more substantial action against Big Tech may come from federal agencies than Capitol Hill in the next two years, that hasn’t stopped Jordan from trying to motivate House Democrats. He addressed the chamber, “This is about the First Amendment, something you guys used to care about. And I’d actually hoped we could get bipartisan agreement on protecting the First Amendment.”
