President Biden signed an executive order intended to spur competition. With respect to the tech industry, the order instructs the FTC to establish rules regarding surveillance, data accumulation, unfair competition on marketplaces, and the right-to-repair. It further seeks to restore net neutrality rules to what they were before the Trump administration. Facebook’s acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp may attract the attention of antitrust regulators. In addition, Amazon may find itself under the microscope for unfair competition practices. The ACLU praised the President’s move.
Key Takeaways:
- President, Biden, signed an executive order on Friday, July, 9. He called it the Promoting Competition in the American Economy Executive Order.
- This new executive order is specifically aimed at the tech industry and has 72 directives for federal entities.
- The order takes aim restrictive high tech practices, that might, as one example, prevent device owners from independent repair shops to repair their equipment.
“Biden’s executive order also goes after how tech companies gather a trove of personal data as part of their business. That’s been an issue for Facebook and Google, among others.”
