#Congress flails as Big Tech’s power grows

“#Congress flails as Big Tech’s power grows”

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    July 29, 2020 <span>|</span> 7:34pm         

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<img alt=”truth,” Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said via remote during testimony before the House Judiciary antitrust subcommittee.” id=”standard-article-image” src=”https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/07/AFP_Facebook_Mark-Zuckerberg.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&w=618&h=410&crop=1″ >
“We do not want to become the arbiters of
truth,” Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said via remote during testimony before the House Judiciary antitrust subcommittee.
POOL/AFP via Getty Images

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                    Wednesday’s House “grilling” of tech CEOs didn’t feature quite as much posturing as the sitdown with Attorney General William Barr the day before, but it was almost as much a waste of time.

The Judiciary Committee’s antitrust subcommittee was ostensibly questioning the heads of Google, Facebook, Apple and Amazon on concerns the tech giants have become too big and too powerful, but members frequently cut the witnesses off before they had a chance to get in more than a few words in response.

“Reclaiming my time!” Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler said in shooshing Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg after “asking” him whether he illegally acquired Instagram with the intent of crushing a competitor.

The Obama-era Federal Trade Commission approved that sale in 2012. Ot was simply a cheap stunt for multiple members to complain now, when it’s clear nothing will reverse it.

Subcommittee Chairman David Cicilline used his opening statement to intone, “These platforms enjoy the power to pick winners and losers, shake down small businesses, and enrich themselves while choking off competitors.”

Sounds a lot like Congress, actually.

Other members went off on truly head-thumping tangents: One Republican wanted to know why his campaign e-mails were going into his father’s spam folder; a Democrat pressed Amazon’s Jeff Bezos on the sale of knockoff products on the site.

None of it did a lick of good. Even with serious topics, such as social-media companies’ censorship standards, the format of each member getting just five minutes a round to ask questions and get them answered left no room for anything but spin.

“We do not want to become the arbiters of truth,” Zuckerberg declared. Yet they have — and that’s only part of the incredible power these companies have acquired.

Far too much power, in most people’s minds. Yet the members of Congress, through their technological ignorance and insistence on speechifying, can’t seem to ask the right questions, let alone offer answers.

So the tech moguls ran circles around the pols, even as they continue to amass more power and put their fingers on the scales of of modern discussion.