Biden Urges Passage of Privacy, Antitrust Bills Aimed at 'Big Tech'
President Joe Biden called during his State of the Union speech Tuesday night for Congress to “pass bipartisan legislation to stop Big Tech from collecting personal data on kids and teenagers online, ban targeted advertising to children, and impose stricter limits on the personal data these companies collect on all of us.” The government “must finally hold social media companies accountable for the experiment they are running on our children for profit,” Biden said. He called for similar legislation last month amid hopes for more collaboration on privacy legislation.
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Biden urged lawmakers to “pass bipartisan legislation to strengthen antitrust enforcement and prevent big online platforms from giving their own products an unfair advantage.” He called for Congress to pass a Junk Fee Prevention Act that will “make cable internet and cellphone companies stop charging you up to $200 or more when you decide to switch to another provider. We’ll cap service fees on tickets to concerts and sporting events and make companies disclose all fees upfront.”
Biden earlier touted Congress’ success in enacting the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, which included $65 billion for connectivity, and the Chips and Science Act. “America used to make nearly 40% of the world’s chips,” but “in the last few decades, we lost our edge and we’re down to producing only 10%,” he said. “We all saw what happened during the pandemic when chip factories overseas shut down.” Car “prices went up,” as “did everything from refrigerators to cellphones,” Biden said: “We can never let that happen again.”