Time to rewrite our relationship with big tech companies: Sen. Amy Klobuchar at SXSW

U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar says it is time for increased regulation and the renewing of America’s relationship with its biggest technology companies. 

“Our current social contract with big tech needs to be renegotiated,” Klobuchar said during a South by Southwest session on Friday. She said it’s time for setting up new expectations and putting new rules of the road in place on privacy and transparency, on political lands, on interoperability, and on antitrust which means updating the laws.

Margrethe Vestager, executive vice-president of the European Commission and Commissioner for Competition, Tristan Harris, president and co-founder of the Center For Humane Technology, and Anne Marie Engtoft Larsen, tech ambassador for Denmark’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs joined the SXSW panel alone with Sen. Amy Klobuchar.

Klobuchar said she wants to improve privacy, antitrust, and information laws. She also said that the U.S needs to work with the rest of the world on these issues. 

She said our aim should be to make this goal work and try to solve the major problems.

Klobuchar is among the lawmakers pushing for more supervision of technology companies,  including proposing an antitrust bill that would force companies to prove that incorporating with a competitor wouldn’t reduce competition or hurt consumers. 

She also added that technology companies have helped create opportunities and have played roles in improving education, health care services during the pandemic and getting news in real-time.

Klobuchar leads the Senate Judiciary Committee’s antitrust subcommittee and has called for a number of related measures in recent months, including for lawmakers to revisit Facebook’s purchases of Instagram and WhatsApp.