US Democratic Party Presidential Candidate, Joe Biden and his deputy Kamala Harris, won the 2020 presidential election in the United States. Biden and Harris received 290 electoral votes and was elected by more than 74 million US people.
The rise of Biden to become US president is predicted to have an impact on the technology industry and “tech giants”such as social media managers such as Facebook and Twitter.
Biden, for example, wanted to repeal Article 230 in the Communications Decency Act (CDA) 1996. This article has been used as a legal protective instrument for managers of social media platforms.
This is because the article states that all posts uploaded by users on a social media platform are the responsibility of the user himself. This means that the platform that becomes the media for dissemination is not responsible for the content of user uploads and is immune to lawsuits, even if the post contains violence or hoaxes.
Biden wants to remove Section 230 so that technology companies managing social media have the same responsibility as press institutions for published information.
“The media cannot write untrue news and are free from various demands, but he (Zuckerberg, owner of Facebook) can,” said Biden in an interview with the New York Times some time ago, as compiled, Monday (9/11/2020 ).
“With regards to the technology industry, Article 230 of the CDA must be repealed as soon as possible and must be priority number one,” added Biden. It is not yet known exactly how Biden’s steps forward to abolish Article 230 in the 1996 CDA.
Apart from Biden, US President Donald Trump recently expressed his disagreement with Article 230, even though he himself often posts content containing misinformation. However, Trump’s motivation may be different because he objected to social media managers who flagged his posts because they contained questionable information.
An overly dominant tech giant Another technology issue faced by Biden is the issue of anti-trust , which concerns alleged anti-competitive practices by US technology companies, including Google, Facebook, Amazon and Apple, in reducing competition.
Both Joe Biden’s Democrats and Donald Trump’s Republican Party believe that these giant technology companies have grown too big to be too dominant.
In July and October, its top officials, Google’s Sundar Pichai, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, Twitter’s Jack Dorsey, Apple’s Tim Cook, and Amazon’s Jeff Bezos were questioned by the US Congress regarding allegations of monopolistic practices by their respective companies.
The US Congress also published a 449-page report detailing the abuse of its dominant market position by Google, Amazon, Apple and Facebook. There is also a roadmap containing steps to curb the domination of the technology giants.
Under the Donald Trump administration, following more than a year of investigation, the US Department of Justice (DOJ) has filed a lawsuit against Google for monopolizing its internet search and advertising business. It is not clear how the future Joe Biden administration will respond to anti-trust issues among technology industry players.
There is indeed a push to divide up the tech companies that are seen as too big, but Biden has said the discourse is premature. He allegedly will rely more on regulation in this regard.
