U.S. presidential candidates’ positions on breaking up Big Tech
MacDailyNews Webmaster
In the preamble to the U.S. 2020 presidential election, many Democratic White House contenders have argued in favor of either breaking up or tightening regulation of companies such as Facebook, Amazon, Apple, and Google. Here’s a look at the U.S. presidential candidates’ positions on breaking up Big Tech.
President Trump tours Apple Mac Pro facility with CEO Tim Cook in Austin, Texas on Wednesday, November 21, 2019President Trump: Trump, whose digital campaign helped propel him to the White House in 2016, has stopped short of calling for tech giants to be broken up, but said “obviously there is something going on in terms of monopoly,” when asked about major tech companies in the past.
Joe Biden: Biden, who was vice president in the Silicon Valley-friendly Obama administration, has said that splitting up companies such as Facebook was “something we should take a really hard look at” but that it was “premature” to make a final judgment.
Bernie Sanders: Sanders, who frequently criticizes corporate influence, has also called for the breakup of big tech companies such as Facebook and Amazon.
Elizabeth Warren: She has called for legislation to restrict large tech platforms – which she would designate as “platform utilities” -from owning and participating in a marketplace at the same time. Under this law, Apple would not be allowed to both run the App Store and sell its own apps on it, for example.
MacDailyNews Take: More candidates’ positions are laid out in the full article.
It’ll be very interesting to see the breakdown of political donations out of Silicon Valley this cycle given the U.S. presidential candidates’ positions on breaking up Big Tech.
