US antitrust subcommittee to hear news outlets and Microsoft on big tech dominance

The US House Judiciary antitrust subcommittee hearing on March 12 will include Microsoft President Brad Smith along with representatives of certain media outlets. The antitrust subcommittee is investigating the dominance of social media platforms in the online sphere and how they affect the news organisations in negotiating better advertising revenue deals with these tech companies, including Twitter, Facebook, Google, Apple, and Amazon. The bipartisan investigation, which began in June 2019, has collected nearly 1.3 million documents over the course of one and a half years. 

“A year after initiating the investigation, we received testimony from the Chief Executive Officers of the investigated companies: Jeff Bezos, Tim Cook, Mark Zuckerberg, and Sundar Pichai. For nearly six hours, we pressed for answers about their business practices, including about evidence concerning the extent to which they have exploited, entrenched, and expanded their power over digital markets in anticompetitive and abusive ways. Their answers were often evasive and non-responsive, raising fresh questions about whether they believe they are beyond the reach of democratic oversight,” a report by the panel said last year. 

'They control access to markets'

Friday’s hearing of the antitrust subcommittee will focus on tech companies’ relations with news organizations and the accusations that social media platforms exploit publishers by denying them a fair share of advertising revenue. Social media companies have often been accused of monopolistic practices, including controlling access to markets and picking winners and losers. The US subcommittee likened these tech companies’ monopoly to the era of oil barons and railroad tycoons. 

According to reports, David Chavern, head of the News Media Alliance, will also testify at the hearing alongside Emily Barr of the National Association of Broadcasters and Jonathan Schleuss, president of NewsGuild-CWA. Media reports suggest that the US lawmakers will introduce a bill in the coming weeks or months to curb the dominance of social media platforms and create a healthy environment for business.