The European Union may be falling apart like the Acropolis, but that 28-member organization was astute enough to know Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and other tech giants are a band of sociable outlaws who danced with their own set of laws. The EU got their law-slinging act together and let Bezos, Zuckerberg, and Pichai know the tricks and traps, and the wheeling and dealing of personal information can set them back some serious coin if they keeping do all that. Europe has a law that finally protects personal information. The United States is still trying to figure out how Trump got elected. And while Mueller extracts one lie at a time from Trump endless bag of lies, Internet users have their personal information hijacked by social media sites on an ongoing basis.
The United States government knew years ago that an unregulated Internet could be a social game-changer. But some officials thought these techno retail and wholesale giants wouldn’t grow as face and as slick as they did. But now that the U.S. has to settle for second place in the law-slinging contest, Congress wants to make sure they get the laws right. And that means another epic battle of incompetence.
Sundar Pichai told the Washington Post that he doesn’t think tech companies are out of control, or too big. Pichai believes there are a lot more choices for Internet users these days, so there’s no hint of a monopoly brewing. Plus, he thinks a decentralized and open Internet is the way to go.
But at this point, Congress has to step in and give these mega-hungry, but very social capitalists some boundaries. Google and Facebook are already in timeout for alleged discrimination against their business foes as well as using personal information without permission for profit.
According to the Washington Post, there’s no clear consensus in Congress when it comes to regulating the Internet. That will be a battle, according to some Senators. But some Senators think expanding antitrust laws might be the way to go. That way there’s no political blood spilled.
Republican Congressman Goodlatte from Virginia said he thought Facebook and Google played political favorites and updating the antitrust laws would stop that. But senior political analysis, Billy Easley said threats of antitrust enforcement is a bad idea.
But the good news is the new Congress will do something. But no one knows when.
