Partisanship in Congress demonstrates it is empirically unpopular to further regulate Big Tech

After years of hearings, reports and stalled proposals, Congress ended 2022 to regulate Big Tech. But a few blocks away in Washington, Jonathan Kanter is just getting warmed up. While the Justice Department’s top antitrust official has yet to file fresh lawsuits against any of the country’s biggest tech companies, Kanter has spent months laying the groundwork for a broader tech reckoning, arguing that changes in technology have created new opportunities for businesses to exploit monopoly power in ways courts may not yet recognize as potentially illegal. Traditionally, antitrust enforcers have focused on how dominant companies might hurt consumers through increased prices or by reducing choices in the marketplace. But Kanter, along with his ally at the Federal Trade Commission, Chair Lina Khan, have pushed to expand the US government’s thinking, looking increasingly at the sophisticated ways businesses can use new technologies to gain an anticompetitive advantage. That includes the use of “dark patterns,” software interface designs meant to nudge consumers toward making a company’s preferred choice, Kanter told CNN in an interview last month. “Economic realities have shifted,” Kanter said. “Some of the interaction between companies and consumers now is personalized and targeted. [Antitrust] has to take into account how consumers react to dark patterns; how companies can affect the behavior of consumers; how they can extract value, consumers’ attention, money and data.” With Congress entering a new phase of , policy experts have said the outlook for tech legislation may now be even dimmer than before — making enforcers like the DOJ and the FTC the likeliest sources of action going forward.