A new proposal by Senator Josh Hawley calling for a complete revamping and restructuring of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) raised the eyebrows of tech companies at Silicon Valley. The proposal gets way too controversial when it names the tech giants Google and Facebook by its name denoting as instances.
“The FTC has stood by as major corporations have consolidated their power and stifled competition,” Hawley writes in the paper. “The agency as presently constituted is in no shape to ensure competition in today’s markets, let alone tomorrow’s.”
Here’s what the new proposal aims to accomplish,
- Eliminating the existing vertical which prevents the FTC to fine the first time offenders or initial violations.
- FTC to block the purchase of new companies by the tech giants to evade FTC norms
- Restructuring the FTC process to operate within the department of Justine, run by an exclusive Senate-confirmed director instead of panel of commissioners.
- Creating a department to do consistent digital market research to catch offenders
In fact, he named the big tech companies Google and Facebook in his proposal,
“Google and Facebook have acquired hundreds of companies in the last two decades, yet the FTC never once intervened to try to block any of these acquisitions,” the section reads. “The reality is the FTC is not putting even its current resources to effective use because the FTC is poorly designed.”
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