OTI Submits Statement for the Record in Congressional Antitrust Hearing with Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google CEOs

Today, the House Subcommittee on Antitrust, Commercial, and Administrative Law will hold a hearing entitled “Online Platforms and Market Power, Part 6: Examining the Dominance of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google.” The CEOs of the four companies will testify to further the subcommittee’s investigation into alleged anticompetitive practices. All four companies are also currently under antitrust investigation by the DOJ, FTC, and state attorneys general.

OTI submitted a statement for the record recommending that antitrust enforcers expand their understanding of consumer welfare to better reflect platform market dynamics, and that Congress pass comprehensive privacy legislation with strong data portability requirements. The statement argues that the consumer welfare standard used in antitrust law should include privacy harms and civil rights harms to better regulate platform markets. The statement also argues that data portability and comprehensive privacy legislation would help address the competitive harms caused by business models that monetize user data by maximizing engagement and retaining user attention.

OTI is part of a coalition of twenty civil society organizations calling on antitrust regulators to closely scrutinize Google’s proposed acquisition of FitBit. OTI has explained that privacy is a competition issue and has argued that the merging of FitBit’s sensitive health data with Google’s user data will harm both privacy and competition. OTI has criticized the DOJ and FTC’s new vertical merger guidelines for failing to refresh outdated thinking on antitrust law.

The following quote can be attributed to Christine Bannan, policy counsel at New America’s Open Technology Institute:

“Rampant misinformation, civil rights violations, and privacy intrusions are all evidence of the digital market’s failure to promote consumer welfare. Antitrust enforcement should reflect the realities of the harms caused by dominant technology platforms.”