The NPR Politics Podcast - What Will Tech Policy Look Like Under Joe Biden?

Episode Date: December 24, 2020

Tech giants are the subject of censorship scrutiny, anti-monopoly lawsuits, and international trade tension. President-elect Joe Biden will have a lot to handle.This episode: political correspondent Scott Detrow, tech correspondent Shannon Bond, and tech reporter Bobby Allyn.Connect:Subscribe to the NPR Politics Podcast here.Email the show at [e-mail] the NPR Politics Podcast Facebook Group.Listen to our playlist The NPR Politics Daily Workout.Subscribe to the NPR Politics Newsletter.Find and support your local public radio station.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Scott Detrow. I cover the Biden transition. And today we are talking about what tech policy could look like under Joe Biden. It's part of a series of big picture conversations we're going to have over the next week or so talking about what things might look like next year after January 20th when there's a Biden administration. Today we've got Shannon Bond and Bobby Allen from NPR's tech team here. Hey guys. Hello. Hey Scott. So let's start with how things are going right now despite the fact that there are a lot of arguments to be made that he'd never be president without Twitter and Facebook. President Trump has really kind of soured on big tech lately. How has that

affected the landscape in D.C.? You know this this Trump's unhappiness with with the big tech companies, you know, actually kind of well predates, you know, talking about how they allegedly censor conservatives and issuing his first threats to strip them of legal immunity. And that was around when the social media companies started labeling his tweet. You know, I think Twitter went first, right? They labeled tweets of his about protests related to George Floyd's death. And then, you know, they've also sort of moved more aggressively to label misinformation about COVID. And Trump got swept up in that. But it's definitely been a love hate relationship, because as you say, he's also like really dependent on these platforms. He loves using these platforms to communicate. I think it's a lot less likely

that Joe Biden is going to be censored by Twitter than Donald Trump, just based on the types of things he tweets about. But the Biden administration, there are so many things right now in a lot of areas where a lot of Obama era people are coming back, a lot of Obama era policies are coming back. Fair to say that tech is not going to be one of these areas, because I'm just thinking of how much the relationship between the Democratic Party, between Washington, D.C. and big tech has changed over the last four years. Yeah, I think that's definitely true. I mean, a lot of people, when they're talking about what tech is going to look like under Biden, like to look back at the Obama administration, which pretty famously had a cozy relationship with tech and tech executives and like to advance policy. That Silicon Valley was very happy about.

And I actually think there's a fair amount of consistency in terms of the big picture themes, the details, and the disputes are going to be very different. But the big picture themes of being tough on tech, and not giving them an easy time and, you know, just coming after them pretty hard and trying to rein in their incredible power. You saw some of that, you know, just coming after them pretty hard and trying to rein in their incredible power. You saw some of that, you know, during the Trump administration. And we're actually going to see in a number of policy areas, some of that continued when Biden's in the White House. Yeah, I would say, I mean, I think one of the things that has happened under Trump is that so much like with everything with Trump, so much of the conversation has been dominated by him. But that's almost like overshadowed the fact that, you know, the concerns that that regulators and politicians have about these big Silicon Valley giants these days really are bipartisan.

I mean, you saw that this summer. The House had done this long antitrust investigation into the biggest tech companies, into Facebook, Google, Apple, and Amazon. And, you know, it was House Democrats who released a report, you know, saying that they are all monopolies and compete unfairly. You know, you have people like Elizabeth Warren who have for a long time been calling to, you know, break up Facebook. And so even though all the light and noise around this has come from Trump, that actually doesn't mean that the Democrats aren't very eager to sort of show that they're challenging these West Coast barons. Yeah. And on that point, could you guys just give us a big picture overview of the various lawsuits and big investigations that are out there and would still be going on on the 20th when the Biden folks move in? Right. So there's a bunch related to antitrust, to competition law, right? So and the big targets

that so far there are Google and Facebook. So there are three big lawsuits against Google, which are, you know, both federal, the Department of Justice, but also the state lawsuits. The state attorneys general have been very active in investigating the tech companies. And, you know, I think when the DOJ filed their lawsuit, you know, there was some question of, you know, is this politically motivated? You know, does this continue? But the fact that the state AGs are involved, all the experts say, you know, that that is an indication that, you know, the pressure will continue and these lawsuits will almost certainly go forward. Similarly, the Federal Trade Commission and a group of AGs have sued Facebook or are seeking to break it up. And again, that seems like something that will continue well

beyond the transition and the change of administration. Plus, there are ongoing investigations of companies like Amazon and Apple that haven't even yet resulted in lawsuits and may not. But, you know, I don't think there's any indication to expect like a Biden led FTC or DOJ to be any less aggressive in looking at these companies. And the tech companies absolutely have been anticipating this for some time, you know, with sort of muscling up their lobbying presence in Washington, and even the way that they handled disinformation, trying to curb it ahead of the presidential election was just such a 180 from 2016. And now when it comes to some, you know, regulatory areas, unlike before, when they sort of, you know, fought vigorously any kind of move to regulate the industry, now they're more open to sort of more moderate regulations.

Yeah, I think they see that it's inevitable. So given all of this, I'm curious what the mood is like in Silicon Valley, in and around the tech giants about this change in leadership that's about to happen. Is it ambivalence? Is it relief? Is it concern? I think that varies a bit company to company. You know, I think that, you know, I think that they deal with the administration they have. And so, of course, they're always going to try to make these relationships. I mean, you saw that with Facebook. You know, Mark Zuckerberg had dinner with Donald Trump.

You know, they within several of these companies, there are high ranking, you know, former Republican officials, you know, just as there are high ranking former Democrats. But I think you I think, as Bobby said, you've sort of seen the way they have sort of been willing to take a more aggressive approach, you know, particularly Facebook and Twitter about misinformation, about kind of, you know, saying, yes, there are actually limits to what people can say online, you know, indicates that I think they may be in the immediate, they feel that they have a bit more backing to do that. Like if they do that, they aren't necessarily going to be targeted the way they've been targeted by Trump. Yeah. And I think on some of the really sort of hot button tech policy issues, tech doesn't think, they don't think they're going to catch a break. I mean, when it comes to China, you know, Biden's going to be tough on China, not in the same way that Trump was, you know,

by singling out a single app like TikTok, but there's going to be some consistency there. You know, the future of the gig economy is going to become a target in the Biden administration, most likely. And there's just a number of ways where the theme of just cracking down on this industry is really going to be ramped up. All right, we're going to take a quick break. When we come back, we'll keep walking through some of the specific policy areas where the way that DC views tech could change. I'm Guy Raz, and on NPR's How I Built This, how Tim Ferriss, as an entrepreneur, author, investor, and podcaster, turned himself into a multimillion-dollar brand. Subscribe or listen now. And we're back and zooming out a little bit. One of the things that has gotten a lot of attention over the last few years was the way that the Trump

administration cracked down on legal immigration had really affected technology firms. We're expecting the Biden administration to take a much different approach to immigration. Any sense yet of how that could play out in these companies? Yeah, I mean, this is an area of big concern for a lot of these tech companies, right? Because they hire so many high skilled visa workers, like people on H-1B visas, like the tech companies are among the biggest users of those. And they say, you know, it's because, you know, they want to get the most skilled people from all over the world. The Trump administration had tried to restrict those visas.

That's been blocked by the courts. But we're still seeing the last gasp of this. The Department of Justice has sued Facebook over the way it has used these visas and accusing it of discriminating against Americans in hiring. So I think they'll be very eager to see how the Biden administration views, you know, immigration and views these issues, because they see it, you know, the tech companies see this as an absolute, like, life or death issue for them about being able to recruit the most talented engineers, especially, you know, from all over the world. Yeah, exactly. I mean, there's a statistic out there that,

you know, foreign born workers represent like 60% of folks who are in, you know, the tech sphere by and large. So I really think that a lot of these companies are, you know, breathing a sigh of relief because, you know, finally the pipeline for foreign-born workers, you know, is finally going to be open again. Let's talk about TikTok for a moment. I'm going to admit I'm not as up to speed on it as other people. So I'd say the three big things that I know were the ocean spray situation, that they somehow forced a Ratatouille musical, which I'm pro, and also the fact that the Trump administration really tried to crack down on and even ban it from the US. So what is the state of things and what could change when we have a

new president? Yeah, so Trump launched this pretty extraordinary effort to marshal the powers of the federal government to shut down a private company operating in the US. That doesn't happen every day. And Trump's central claim here has been that TikTok's parent company, this Chinese tech giant ByteDance, could be using the app to spy on Americans. The problem is that in duking this out in court, the Trump administration never offered solid evidence. There is one federal judge who looked at all of the government's evidence and said, the national security threat here is, quote, phrased in the hypothetical, and the judge blocked it from taking effect.

Other judges have done the same thing. So I guess it's the TikTok ban that never happened. But in the meantime, there are talks happening behind closed doors about bringing in more American ownership of the app to ensure that there is a firewall between China. But it's a complicated negotiation, and we just don't know where things are going to land. One thing that's really worth pointing out here, though, is that while Trump's intense focus on TikTok may look almost random, like he was singling out just one particular app,

it really does highlight bipartisan concerns over Chinese investment in tech companies that become popular in the US. You know, there are a host of data privacy and national security issues that experts on both sides of the aisle say are legitimate and worthy of suspicion. And that overall skepticism about the rise of China is not going away in the Biden administration. So just add that to one of the many, many areas of possible tension with China that the Biden administration is going to be navigating. So, Shannon, let's end with this. There are so many different areas where regulation could change, where people have been talking about shifting, you know, the way that we deal with rideshare, the way that the country deals with the ongoing question of how

much responsibility social network sites have for their content, so many different other places. What are like two or three big areas that you're really paying attention to, to how the Biden administration navigates them? Yeah, I think you just actually named a couple of them. So certainly the gig economy, right? So here in California, Uber and Lyft funded this really successful campaign to get voters to approve, basically approve their business model, which says, you know, they don't treat their drivers as employees. Their drivers have been treated as independent contractors. And so that means they don't get a bunch of benefits. Now, this law that they passed here in California does extend drivers some limited benefits and essentially a version of a minimum wage, but without the sort of full employment rights.

Obviously, labor groups have not been happy about this, but the gig companies like Uber, Lyft, but also DoorDash and some of these delivery companies have been very emboldened. And they've talked about taking this campaign national, so taking it to other states. And I don't think it's out of the question that you could also see more like a federal push for this. The other thing, you mentioned this issue over content moderation. So as we said at the beginning, one of the real flashpoints that Trump has had with these tech companies, particularly Facebook and Twitter, has been over this, you know, once arcane section of law or area of law called Section 230, which basically allows the big platforms. But frankly, any anybody who hosts comment online, anyone who lets people post things on their

website. So this applies from Facebook and Twitter to Reddit. It gives who, you know, lets people post things on their website. So this, you know, applies from Facebook and Twitter to Reddit. It gives them, you know, freedom, freedom from being sued for what users post. So I can't sue Twitter because Bobby says something mean about me on Twitter. Which I do regularly. Which he does, you know, all the time, which is really frustrating. But so Trump had, you know, in his fight with the companies, Trump has threatened to take this away. I mean, he most recently tried to tie repealing this to authorizing defense spending. He has been shot down. But just because Trump is going to be gone actually doesn't mean this whole conversation about Section 230 and broadly how much responsibility these companies should have for what is on their platform is going to go away. Because, in fact, Democrats are very interested in rethinking this law. I mean, I think there's a broad consensus

that the law is fairly outdated. It gets very wonky very quickly, very legalistic, but it's pretty important because it's literally like what we're allowed to say on the internet. All right. Well, Shannon, Bobby, thank you so much for coming on the podcast to talk to us about all of this. Thank you. Thanks for having us. All right. And it's Christmas Eve. If you're celebrating the holiday, I hope you can have some sort of reflection and peace and family time tonight, even if it's in a 2020 Zoom sort of way. And if that distance has you down, please know that it is going to be a lot better next holiday season. It really is.

We'll be back in your feeds keeping you company tomorrow, just like we are every weekday. I'm Scott Detrow. Thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.