Big Tech critic Lina Khan signals no-nonsense approach as she assumes top regulatory role
Lina Khan is the new head of the Federal Trade Commission
President Biden’s choice to head the Federal Trade Commission, Lina Khan, signaled her willingness to take on Big Tech in a Twitter post following her confirmation.
Khan wrote that it is the job of the FTC to safeguard competition and protect consumers, a mission she said she looks forward to upholding during her tenure.
Khan was sworn in as FTC chair on Tuesday, just hours after the Senate confirmed her as one of five members of the commission on a 69-28 vote.
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Khan has been a professor at Columbia University Law School and burst onto the antitrust scene with her massive scholarly work in 2017 as a Yale law student, "Amazon’s Antitrust Paradox." She helped lay the foundation for a new way of looking at antitrust law beyond the impact of big-company market dominance on consumer prices. As counsel to a House Judiciary antitrust panel in 2019 and 2020, she played a key role in a sweeping bipartisan investigation of the market power of the tech giants.
She assumes the key regulatory role at a time when there is mounting scrutiny on big tech companies from Congress and federal officials.
Last week, lawmakers unveiled a bipartisan package of bills targeting anticompetitive practices of large companies like Amazon, Apple, Google and Facebook, including one designed to potentially break up large tech companies operating businesses with conflicts of interest.
Meanwhile, there are numerous ongoing efforts in court to try to ensure that companies do not engage in monopolistic behaviors.
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As previously reported by FOX Business, Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost filed a lawsuit last week seeking to classify Google as a public utility in the state due to its internet search dominance.
The complaint takes issue with the fact that the company is able to feature its own products on its results pages.
Amazon was sued late last month by the D.C. Attorney General over anti-competitive practices.
Facebook was sued in 2020 by federal officials.
The Department of Justice sued Google in October over antitrust concerns.
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Biden said as a presidential candidate that dismantling the big tech companies should be considered. He also has said he wants to see quickly crimped the social media companies’ long-held legal protections for speech on their platforms.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.