Des Moines Sun

Iowa's U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley and other conservatives support an antitrust bill that would empower progressives without protecting free speech, according to analyst Ashley Baker of the Committee for Justice.

Grassley was among a group of Republicans who backed the American Innovation and Choice Online Act (Senate Bill 2992), which passed the committee via a 16-6 bipartisan vote. Conservatives often speak about Big Tech “canceling” speech it doesn’t agree with. 

But Baker, who is director of public policy at the Committee for Justice — which opposes the bill — said the measure would neither break up the Big Tech firms, nor prohibit them from canceling any speech on their platforms with which they disagreed. The bill would, however, empower government overseers like Lina Khan, chair of the Federal Trade Commission, to have more oversight. 

“If this bill were law, not a single company would be required to do anything different to conservative speech on their platform,” Baker told the St. Louis Reporter. “Furthermore, the behavior that the bill seeks to regulate is not anti-competitive. Companies that are not covered under the bill promote their own products and services, both in stores and online, every day. If it is the behavior that is the problem, then the bill wouldn’t apply to just a handful of companies."

Baker said the bill would prevent sociopolitical agendas that don’t promote a particular agenda from having a platform. 

“It is disconcerting to see some Republican senators who are angry at Big Tech for unrelated reasons supporting this bill, when they know it will empower and embolden progressives at the Federal Trade Commission and in the Biden Justice Department bent on targeting all sectors of the economy,” Baker said. “The bill would give left-leaning bureaucrats unprecedented power to manipulate the free market and the design of consumer products and services.”

The bill also would give additional powers to government oversight agencies such as the Federal Trade Commission. Late last year, Khan proposed a new strategic plan that would dramatically shift the FTC’s goals toward “marginalized” communities, citing increased focusing on the “underserved” and prioritizing social “equity,” according to the plan’s text.

Accountable Tech is supportive of the bill. 

“We wouldn't be supporting this bill if we felt it threatened platforms' ability to properly enforce their rules to safeguard people from harm,” Jesse Lehrich, co-founder of Accountable Tech, told Protocol in January. The group states on its website that it is "working to bring about long-term structural reform to tackle the existential threat social media companies pose to our information ecosystem and democracy."

Not only would the antitrust measure not prohibit tech “cancel” culture, it might actually have the opposite effect, according to critics such as Richard Hanania, president of the Center for the Study of Partisanship and Ideology. 

Hanania wrote in a Feb. 23 Newsweek op-ed that: “If passed, (S. 2992) will be enforced by the Federal Trade Commission, led by Lina Khan, who has argued that increased antitrust enforcement would harm a Big Tech business model that ‘incentivizes the dissemination of disinformation.’ One of Khan's senior advisors is Meredith Walker, who has called the Daily Caller a ‘hate site.’”

The Judiciary Committee placed the bill on the Senate’s calendar for Jan. 20, with Republicans Grassley and Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), Ted Cruz (R-Texas), Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) and John Kennedy (R-La.) voting in favor of it. The bill is sponsored by Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota.

CNBC reported that the bill would prohibit platforms such as Google, Amazon and Apple — and possibly some social media platforms — from so-called "self-preferencing," which would prevent them from discriminating against smaller businesses that use their services.