As tech titans seem to eagerly embrace President Donald Trump, Fordham Law Professor Zephyr Teachout provided her expert opinion to Al Jazeera on the new role for out-of-power Democrats on Big Tech.
Teachout is the author of “Break ‘Em Up: Recovering Our Freedom from Big Ag, Big Tech, and Big Money.”
Zephyr Teachout, a lawyer, author and associate professor of law at Fordham University, says Big Tech leaders were not aligned with the Democrats, though, and that has become even more clear than it was recently.
“Tech leaders were never with Democrats. They have always been aligned with power,” says Teachout. “In the Obama era, Google wrapped its arms and tentacles around and into the Obama administration, and for a combination of cultural reasons and reflected glow, there was a sense that Big Tech were, for Democrats, ‘our people’.”
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Now that the sands have shifted, Democrats will have to decide how they will approach Big Tech going forward. Will they continue to pursue antitrust efforts and fight to tax billionaires? Or will they limit those efforts to appease the billionaires?
“Democrats should be part of the people — workers, small business owners, local communities whether in cities or small towns — and fight against the rapacious middlemen that steal wages, exploit consumers, and destroy the chance for small businesses to thrive,” Teachout says. “Democrats should be the party of small D democracy, and that’s incompatible with gargantuan octopuses of power.”
Essentially, Teachout says Democrats should not pull back on their efforts to reform Big Tech and tax billionaires, and they should continue to fight for working-class people. She says Democrats need to lay out a clear agenda for breaking up Big Tech and recognise the threat that Big Tech poses to “innovation, equality, and democracy”.
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“That means insisting that tech companies protect interoperability and the right for users to easily exit to other services. That means public investment in open-source software [including for AI]that communities can run and control,” Teachout said.
Read “What is the role for out of power Democrats on Big Tech?” on Al Jazeera.