https://www.wsj.com/articles/social-media-and-hawleys-folly-11565551761
What does Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley have against Silicon Valley? On July 31 he tweeted (as opposed to sending by Pony Express) “Social media ‘innovation’? What innovation? Big Tech doesn’t deliver for the American people, and that’s the biggest problem of all.” The previous day the senator introduced S.2314, the Social Media Addiction Reduction Technology Act, which would smother with a giant pillow the innovation he claims not to see. Be warned: Regulation may soon arrive in Techland.
Who is this guy—and why does he think he can micromanage a trillion-dollar industry? Born in Arkansas and bred in the Show Me State, Mr. Hawley graduated from Stanford, then Yale Law. He became Missouri’s attorney general in 2017 and began investigating the classified-ad website Backpage. The site sued to stop the investigation, lost, and then Mr. Hawley sued it back. He was thwarted in gathering information by Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which I wrote about last month; the provision defines certain online services as platforms, not liable for the content their users post. The episode may have stoked Mr. Hawley’s disdain for social media and Big Tech. He also opened an antitrust investigation into Google the same year.
This antitech inclination hasn’t always defined Mr. Hawley’s persona. As attorney general he said, “American workers and American entrepreneurs can compete with anybody, anywhere if our government will stop making America a cost-prohibitive place to do business.” Hear, hear. When he won his Senate seat last year he ran mostly as a conventional conservative.
But even then he already had his enemies marked. His first Senate speech lamented the “cold and judgmental world of social media,” and things kind of went downhill from there. He even wrote a letter to Mark Zuckerberg more or less describing Facebook as one of the “forces parasitic on our national life.” Ouch.
Mr. Hawley’s new bill has all the worst instincts of the regulatory state—a disappointing achievement coming from a Republican. It would remove the autoplay feature from YouTube, end infinite scrolling on Twitter and Facebook feeds, limit scrolling time to three-minute sessions, set default limits on the use of platforms to 30 minutes a day, and outlaw Snapchat streaks (rewards for consecutive days of contact with friends) and most “gamification” (badges, rewards) for any online service. These diktats are the opposite of market freedom.
The bill’s final kicker is a proposed triennial Federal Trade Commission report to Congress describing how internet companies “interfere with free choices of individuals” by “exploiting human psychology and brain physiology.” In other words, Mr. Hawley wants to restrict freedom because it interferes with free choice. Or something like that. Cut to a video of Orwell rolling over in his grave (though it won’t autoplay). OK, to be fair, Skopos Labs gives the bill a measly 3% chance of being enacted. But that doesn’t make it any less . . . cuckoo.
The New Republic has named Mr. Hawley as part of a group of “postliberal” politicians and intellectuals who think “Big Tech is basically Armageddon” because it is antifamily and anticulture, replacing religion as a dominant force in American lives. This sounds a bit contrived. I think it’s mostly a case of opportunism (which often goes without saying for a U.S. senator). Mr. Hawley is joining the ever-louder chorus of voices denouncing social media’s ability to influence opinion and steer elections. President Trump is even considering an executive order against social-media political bias.
Whether that worry is real or not doesn’t matter; condemning tech is a form of pretend populism. Mr. Hawley is taking an Elizabeth Warren-esque “I have a plan for that” approach, which is more about grabbing headlines than actually passing laws.
Yet the claim that big tech companies don’t deliver innovation is false. We can stream TV shows on subways, enjoy same-day package delivery, have a lady in our phones help us to avoid traffic, sort photos automatically by date, location and faces, and get instant answers to any question in our kitchens from something that looks like a hockey puck. Yeah, but what have you done for me lately?
Mr. Hawley is a quick climber. He likely imagines himself on the presidential debate stage in 2023. But he might want to check the numbers. Eighty percent of Americans use social media. We’re not addicted, we’re bored—and can you blame us? Politics are petty, sports are political, school is dull, entertainment is either superheroes or dystopian muck—and smartphones are the new muscle cars.
Mr. Hawley’s style of heavy-handed regulation is what killed Detroit, distracted phone companies, inflated health-care costs, and wrecked education. Don’t let it kneecap the internet. It won’t be long before the senator announces, “If you like your social media, you can keep your social media.”
