Late Wednesday, Sens. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) and Chuck Grassley (R-IA) released a revised version of their antitrust legislation, S. 2992, following reports of growing opposition among moderate Democrats. The revised bill adds carve outs for bank, credit card, and telecommunications companies, but does nothing to address concerns that the bill would negatively impact privacy, break popular consumer products, and prevent tech platforms from moderating content.

“Instead of making the bill better, Senator Klobuchar added preferential carve outs for telcos and Wall Street in order to win Republican votes,” said Chamber of Progress CEO Adam Kovacevich. “What’s strange is that during committee markup, Senate Democrats were clear about the fixes they wanted on privacy, content moderation, and not breaking consumer products. Yet the new bill makes no meaningful changes in those areas.”

For months, Democrats and public interest groups have raised concerns that Sen. Klobuchar’s antitrust legislation would prevent online platforms from moderating content by preventing sites from discriminating between “similarly situated business users.” Watch Sen. Alex Padilla’s (D-CA) markup remarks highlighting the issue, and read the statement by Free Press. The new bill makes no changes that would address content moderation concerns. 

Additionally, S. 2992 poses the risk of breaking popular consumer products, including Amazon Prime, Google Maps, and Apple apps on the iPhone. Read more about the damaging impact of S. 2992 on tech products. The revised legislation fails to make any changes to the self-preferencing provisions that threaten to break consumer products.

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Chamber of Progress (progresschamber.org) is a center-left tech industry policy coalition promoting technology’s progressive future.  We work to ensure that all Americans benefit from technological leaps, and that the tech industry operates responsibly and fairly.  

Our corporate partners do not have a vote on or veto over our positions. We do not speak for individual partner companies and remain true to our stated principles even when our partners disagree.