The American Innovation and Choice Online Act would authorize the Federal Trade Commission and Department of Justice to prevent the largest companies from giving unfair preference to their own products on their platforms. Amazonthe act would end its Prime services, but bill sponsors Sens. Amy Klobuchar and Chuck Grassley say that claim is a bluff.
Some in the tech industry warn that the legislation could inhibit platforms' ability to moderate their own content. Section 3 of the Klobuchar-Grassley bill makes it unlawful for covered platforms to “discriminate in the application or enforcement of the terms of service of the covered platform among similarly situated business users in a manner that would materially harm competition."
That position would appear contrary to public interests, since the majority of respondents supported tech companies having some form of content moderation policy. Sixty-seven percent of respondents said that platforms such as YouTube, Facebook, and Apple should have the ability to remove"hate speech, violence, bullying, and suicidal content" from the platform. Only 20% of respondents said platforms should be required to carry all forms of content.
Views of the companies' content moderation policies were shaped by political affiliation. Sixty-one percent of Democrats said tech companies were not doing enough to remove harmful content, as opposed to 39% of Republicans."The tech antitrust bill has a content moderation problem, especially among Democratic voters and lawmakers," Chamber of Progress CEO Adam Kovacevich told the.
Conservatives have had mixed responses to Klobuchar's and Grassley's proposed legislation. A coalition of conservative organizations led by the Internet Accountability Project filed a