Next Monday, July 27, four CEO’s from the largest U.S. tech companies will be set to give virtual testimony before the House Judiciary Committee antitrust panel on cases of unfair market competition and consumer manipulation. The attendees will include Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Apple’s Tim Cook, Google’s Sundar Pichai, as well as Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg.
This is not the first-time big tech will be under the magnifying glass, however. In 2018, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg came under fire for the alleged misuse of user data by Cambridge Analytica, a political consulting firm hired by the Trump and Cruz campaigns during the 2016 presidential election. Although, it has been reported that neither campaign utilized the data.
According to multiple tech lobbying groups, the chances of the hearing addressing antitrust issues is highly unlikely nor will new information be presented. It seems likely that the upcoming hearing will have much of the same adversarial tone between Congressional lawmakers and tech CEO’s as has been the case thus far.
