By Lindsay Mark Lewis, for The Hill
Facebook’s long-time unofficial motto was “move fast and break things.” We now see that this was a mistaken approach to building and governing a content platform. But some members of Congress who are seeking to hit back at Facebook seem to have been inspired by this same motto. Rather than taking a thoughtful approach and examining the consequences of new antitrust regulation on U.S. competitiveness and national security, the motto of these lawmakers seems to be: “Move fast, break the American tech industry and see what happens.”
We’ve tried the “move fast and break things” approach. It’s time for a new, more deliberate approach — a real effort to grapple with the benefits and harms of the tech industry and to build a regulatory framework to govern and promote the sustainable growth of American technology companies, while squarely taking on the challenge from techno-authoritarian states such as China and Russia.
What we should not do is overreact to the “Facebook Files” by passing recent bills introduced by Rep. David Cicilline (R-R.I.) and Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) that have nothing to do with the harms described by Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen. These bills threaten to exacerbate those harms by creating hundreds of even less scrupulous mini-Facebooks that are beyond the reach of U.S. law enforcement and would eliminate the ability of consumers to rely on app stores to provide protection against the next social media harm.
