Breakingviews: Big Tech super-regulator would be a super-dud

Two U.S. lawmakers have an idea for reining in Big Tech: get someone else to do it. Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren and her Republican peer Lindsey Graham proposed a new commission for policing technology firms on Thursday. Silicon Valley is indeed posing novel challenges, from privacy to mental health. A tech-focused super-regulator would be a great way to fail to fix these problems.

True, the goals that inspired the Digital Consumer Protection Commission Act, which was introduced to the Senate for consideration on Thursday, are noble. They include protecting young users of social media, and countering anticompetitive behavior. Yet there are already agencies that do some of that. The Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission oversee abuse of dominance by big firms, and problematic mergers. A new watchdog that sets out to safeguard young users would overlap with some of the Federal Communications Commission’s duties. For issues that aren’t already policed, like data privacy, new laws could empower existing regulators that already boast experience and staff.

The other big problem with Warren and Graham’s idea is that new agencies can become political footballs. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, also conceived by Warren and described as a “cop on the beat” for shoppers, returned $10.3 billion to Americans during former President Barack Obama’s second term, according to the agency’s website. But policing was far more lenient under former President Donald Trump, just $2.3 billion recovered for consumers in his first term. Under President Joe Biden the policy pendulum has swung back. The CFPB is intensely polarizing, to the point that opponents want the Supreme Court to kill it for good, arguing its funding structure is unconstitutional.

A new regulator needn’t copy the flawed CFPB blueprint – it would, for example, be led by a five-person commission, whereas CFPB chief Rohit Chopra effectively wields sole power. Even so, the best path would be to pass laws rather than create whole new bureaucracies. The two senators argued Congress is too slow and vulnerable to industry lobbyists to regulate tech with new legislation. Yet lawmakers would have to pass a bill anyway to bring a new agency into existence. Instead of spending time and taxpayer dollars on a super-regulator, lawmakers would do better to get their act together, and face Big Tech themselves.