Everybody Wants to Take a Bite Out of Big Tech
Political scrutiny is coming from so many fronts that it seems impossible for the internet superpowers to mold the outcomes to suit their interests.
The questions just keep on coming.
Photographer: Drew Angerer/Getty Images
For the last couple of years, the downsides of connecting the world online have received more (deserved) attention than they ever have before. As part of that rethinking, technology companies have been engaged in a slow-moving debate with U.S. elected officials and the public about how to make the internet less of a toxic cesspool.
If you believe that the tech superpowers will emerge largely unchanged from this more critical reassessment of the internet, Wednesday’s events should put that optimism to rest. We got fresh evidence that multiple U.S. government institutions are crawling all over the tech companies and questioning what they do — increasing the odds of regulatory, legislative, legal or financial blows.