President Joe Biden urged US legislators on Tuesday to limit how social media corporations lure children and gather their data, accusing Big Tech of conducting a “for profit” experiment on the country’s youth.
“We must finally hold social media companies accountable for the profit-driven experiment they are conducting on our children,” Biden said during his State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress.
“It’s also time to adopt bipartisan legislation to prevent Big Tech from collecting personal data on children and teens online, to prohibit targeted advertising to children, and to place stronger limitations on the personal data that firms gather on all of us.”
Biden’s remarks, which drew enthusiastic applause from members of both parties, were his latest salvo against Big Tech.
Last month, the president urged Republicans and Democrats to break through years of political gridlock and pass legislation that would limit the power of US-based tech behemoths Apple, Google, Amazon, and Facebook-owner Meta.
Biden has frequently argued for tighter safeguards for people’s internet privacy and personal data.
The United States has lagged behind countries in Europe and Asia in developing more contemporary policies to limit the dominance of the largest technology corporations.
In a January op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, Biden said the bill could allow police access to the algorithms that run social media, and that lawmakers should reconsider an existing statute that exempts computer corporations from liability for the material on their sites.
There is bipartisan support for reforming the long-standing regulation known as Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, but political parties differ on how to proceed.
Such an antitrust bill is considered as a long shot, with Republicans, who won control of the House of Representatives last month following the November election, hesitant to stymie big industry.
In recent years, big tech giants have pushed aggressively to oppose any legislative movement in Washington.
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