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FTC hearings add to push hat threatens tech firms


WASHINGTON — For years, Google, Facebook, Amazon and Apple have fought regulators in Europe on privacy, antitrust and taxes. In the United States, the tech titans were on friendly terrain.

But on Thursday, the Federal Trade Commission kicked off a series of hearings to discuss whether the agency’s competition and consumer protection policies should change to better reflect new technologies and companies.

Joseph J. Simons, the agency’s chairman, expressed openness to a new approach.

“The broad antitrust consensus that has existed within the antitrust community, in relatively stable form for the last 25 years, is being challenged,” Simons said. “I approach all these issues with a very open mind, very much willing to be influenced by what we see and hear at these hearings.”

The FTC hearings, the first of 15 to 20 over the next several months, are one of several efforts under way on the federal and state level that threaten to limit the expansion and power of tech companies. This month, Congress will bring executives from top tech companies to testify on proposals for privacy laws. The Justice Department has warned it may start investigations into whether Google and other social media sites are biased against conservative voices.

The spotlight on the giants of Silicon Valley is a major shift for U.S. regulators. For years, they held up the growth of these firms as an emblem of American business leadership and ingenuity. But after a string of crises over privacy and misinformation on social media, a growing chorus of regulators from both political parties are casting a more skeptical eye on the industry.

New regulations are unlikely to arrive anytime soon, and any new federal policies will probably be weaker than those in Europe and states like California. Tech firms have lobbied the Trump administration for voluntary rules and government officials have indicated their desire for light-touch regulation that would preempt some state laws.

“It will be a slow moving ship, faster on privacy than on antitrust, but it’s an important moment,” said Blair Levin, a senior adviser at the research firm New Street and a former chief of staff at the Federal Communications Commission.

Reaching an agreement on changes to antitrust policy will be particularly difficult.

The field of antitrust law has focused for 30 years on whether prices increase when there is limited competition. Some academics and consumer groups have called for regulators to rethink that gauge. Amazon and Google, they say, defy that metric of antitrust law because the companies are gaining power even as they offer cheap or free goods.

One proponent of this change of thinking, Lina Khan, is an assistant to a Democratic commissioner at the FTC. Her focus on Amazon has been buoyed by Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., who has criticized the company and CEO Jeff Bezos for contributing to income inequality.

Cecilia Kang is a New York Times writer.



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