Despite Pushback From Tech Interests, Voters Still Want to Rein in Big Tech
By Aidan Smith
As tech industry giants face an overdue reckoning in Washington, allies of “Big Tech” — Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Google, and Microsoft — have fought back hard against accountability. Amid regulatory scrutiny, industry interests have tried to convince Americans that they benefit from Big Tech’s anti-competitive behavior. As September polling by Data for Progress found, however, Big Tech’s aggressive lobbying hasn’t moved public opinion. Data for Progress found that voters across party lines are concerned about Big Tech’s harm to consumers, markets, and the political process.
Though Facebook and other tech giants feign concern for small businesses, the electorate isn’t buying their PR campaign. Sixty-nine percent of voters across party lines agree that the power wielded by Big Tech companies disadvantages small firms and hurts consumers. In contrast, only 24 percent of voters disagree with this notion.
In Washington, Republican leadership has worked to sabotage efforts to rein in Big Tech’s monopoly power. However, 66 percent of Republican voters agree that Big Tech giants hurt consumers and small businesses. Also, 71 percent of Independent voters also agree that companies like Amazon, Facebook, and Google damage the health of markets to the detriment of consumers.
In the face of efforts to strengthen privacy rights, Big Tech giants like Google have tried to argue that protecting privacy rights will somehow hurt “innovation” and small businesses. To put it bluntly, Americans simply aren’t buying this narrative. Forty-five percent of voters say they were very concerned about Big Tech crushing competition and leveraging their data to limit their choices as a consumer. Forty-one percent of respondents say they were “a little concerned” about this behavior, meaning that 86 percent indicate they were distressed about the situation. In contrast, only 9 percent and 5 percent of respondents say they were either unconcerned or didn’t know about this problem.
Big Tech corporations haven’t just corrupted the market economy: As they’ve accumulated monopoly power, these companies have corrupted the political process, too. Facebook spent almost $20 million on lobbying efforts in 2020 alone, and Big Tech’s lobbying frenzy intensified in 2021 in the wake of renewed antitrust scrutiny. Americans are tired of corporate lobbyists effectively buying influence in the policy-making process, and this behavior has clearly left a sour taste in voters’ mouths.
By a +60-point margin, voters agree that Big Tech has avoided accountability by spending millions on both lobbying efforts and political donations. Voters’ disgust with Big Tech’s interference in the political process is very much a bipartisan affair. Seventy-five and 72 percent of Democratic and Republican voters, respectively, agree that Big Tech has escaped regulation through its millions.
Big Tech interests know that the clock is running out for the industry to avoid overdue accountability. This is why they’ve taken to, among other tactics, bullying regulators with anti-monopoly views into submission through frivolous “conflict of interest” claims. This is not even to mention Big Tech’s rehashing of the argument that antitrust enforcement somehow stands to boost China’s international standing. It’s clear that the Biden Administration has both the legal standing and public support to rein in Big Tech companies through antitrust enforcement.
Aidan Smith (@Aidan_Smx) is a senior advisor at Data for Progress.
Poll results