Politicians on both sides of the Atlantic are drawing a bead on big U.S. tech companies. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) says they have grown too powerful and calls for breaking them up — a stance that’s rapidly become a new liberal litmus test.
Meanwhile, European regulators have been slapping stiff fines on Facebook, Google and Apple for a variety of alleged misdeeds, ranging from tax avoidance to privacy and copyright violations.
President Trump has stirred the pot by claiming that social media companies’ efforts to purge their platforms of false and hateful content are biased against conservatives. The Justice Department, Federal Trade Commission and House Democrats are all gearing up probes into alleged anti-competitive behavior by the tech giants.
