Progressives Praise Big Tech Antitrust Bills for Their Potential to Bolster Censorship

Two antitrust bills that have attracted support from conservatives in Washington DC on the grounds of “bipartisan” efforts to curb the power of Big Tech are now being defended by progressives on the grounds that they will make the censorship of tech platforms easier.

Free speech activists on the Right are divided over the American Choice and Innovation Online Act and the Open App Marketplace Act. The ACIOA limits when Big Tech platforms can discriminate in favor of their own products against other “business users,” and the Open App Markets Act limits app hosting platforms (in practice, Google, Apple, and to a lesser extent Microsoft), from favoring their own apps or forcing other apps to use their app stores.

An analysis by the far left Center for American Progress, Evaluating 2 Tech Antitrust Bills To Restore Competition Online, endorsed both laws on the grounds that they will increase censorship. This heightens concerns that the two bills’ loopholes for “safety” and “security” will be used to enable censorship.