What Do Americans Really Want from Tech Regulation?
We are told that Americans are clamoring for policymakers in Washington to bring down the heavy hand of government to restructure tech markets. These markets, it is said, are morasses of anticompetitive, monopolistic consolidation that degrade the services and products to which users have access. They must be micromanaged, replanned, and their ecosystems must be cracked open.
However, the truth is that Americans are generally happy with their technologies. For all the overblown condemnations and myopic nitpicking, the American tech sector remains staggeringly innovative and competitive. The main beneficiaries are the average users. As the App Security Project (ASP) has written about at length, proposals to introduce more competition into tech markets very often would introduce massive new cybersecurity risks. Very often, those proposals involve requiring tech companies to offer more open systems – also opening the way for nefarious actors. Such proposals are also often predicated on very dubious economic theories.
New polling from the Chamber of Progress demonstrates how little interest the American electorate has in the neo-Brandeisian and populist Republican warfare on Big Tech. First, however, it should be noted that the average voter doesn’t think much about tech policy at all. According to the polling, “regulating technology companies” was one of the top two most important issues for just 2 percent of voters – a category led by “controlling inflation and strengthening the economy.” It seems the boutique antitrust obsessions of elite Ivy League lawyers are simply narrow obsessions not shared by the general public. All this is borne out by the fact respondents said they trusted Joe Biden – who pursued these obsessions like no other – on tech policy less than any recent president.
For ASP’s purposes, the most interesting part of the polling are respondents’ concerns among the options for tech policy going forward. The highest priority was consumer protection against scams and malware. Only about 5 percent of respondents selected regulating device app stores. Even fewer selected banning integrated device or platform interfaces. Accordingly, three fifths of respondents said they “believe tech companies should be allowed to provide the best service to their customers, even if that hurts their competitors.” Quite clearly, this means allowing tech companies to offer top-of-the-line cybersecurity protections, even if it frustrates some in industry and academia.
As a new Congress prepares to enter office, and a new president prepares to enter the White House, officials should remember where the American people stand on tech issues. As in many other policy areas, the voters want government to protect them from force and fraud, and to allow the free market to keep providing useful services and products.
Published on December 20, 2024