Biden Urges Congress to Pass Bipartisan Tech Legislation in WSJ Op-ed | CNN Business

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President Joe Biden on Wednesday called on members of Congress to put aside partisan differences and pass groundbreaking legislation to curb Big Tech, focusing on digital privacy, antitrust and the Industry Liability Shield, Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act.

In a Wall Street Journal op-ed, Biden said that while making some progress in increasing oversight of the tech industry, the US government has run into the limits of its legal authority.

“We need bipartisan action from Congress to hold Big Tech accountable,” Biden wrote. “We have heard a lot about the creation of commissions. It’s time to step up and do something.”

Biden urged lawmakers to “limit targeted advertising and ban it completely for children,” a proposal tied to a key bipartisan privacy bill introduced in the last Congress. He reiterated his long-standing calls to amend Section 230 in ways that would expose tech platforms to more demands for content moderation and advocated for rules that would force them to be more transparent about how their algorithms work.

And he said Congress should implement “fairer rules of the road” to prevent new companies from being “suffocated by incumbents before they have a chance to get off the ground.”

Technology policy analysts have said that with Congress entering a new phase of divided partisan control, the prospect of bipartisan technology legislation may have dimmed, particularly on antitrust issues.

Calls to overhaul Section 230 are bipartisan, but Republicans and Democrats have been unable to agree on why the law needs to be changed, let alone how. Democrats have said tech companies should face more accountability for not removing enough problematic content; Republicans argue that tech platforms should face more responsibility for removing too much.

Some policy experts have said efforts to craft bipartisan privacy legislation have the strongest odds of passage in the new Congress, but are still a long way from becoming law.