Americans Split on Tech Company Regulation

Tech companies continue to grow to astronomical valuations in the U.S., even with the coronavirus pandemic ravaging industries across the world. With their continued growth comes their continued permeation into hundreds of millions of peoples’ personal data. This level of access and control is already leading to huge surges in advertising revenue for many of these tech companies, and with other possible misuses of this data, lawmakers have started to notice and present policy to limit their scope. Americans, however, are still split on whether tech companies should be regulated more than they already are right now.

A new survey from the Pew Research Center shows just about half of U.S. adults want more government regulation for big tech companies. Conservative Republicans lead the charge, growing since 2018 from 42 percent to 53 percent wanting more regulation. Moderates and liberal Democrats are moving in the opposite direction since 2018, with moderates going from 54 percent to 42 percent and liberals moving from 65 percent to 52 percent.

On July 27, CEOs Jeff Bezos of Amazon, Tim Cook of Apple and Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook will appear before Congress to testify in regard to a yearlong investigation into anti-competitive practices in the tech industry.