I distinctly remember the time Mark Zuckerberg came to see me in my office.
It was five years ago now, back when the Facebook founder was at the height of his “move fast and break things” stardom.
I was a new senator and a skeptic.
I thought his company — now Meta — was breaking too many things: like the right to free speech, or the right to control your personal data, or the right of your kids to have a sane childhood.
Zuckerberg came to convince me otherwise, as he had convinced many a regulator and politician, by making vague promises about Big Tech’s good intentions.
I’ll never forget the look of shock on his face when I suggested the best thing Big Tech could do was start surrendering power.
Break themselves up.
Give control back to their customers.
It was abundantly clear he had no such intentions.
Now the Federal Trade Commission is suing Meta for antitrust violations in federal court — and on April 17, another federal judge found tech giant Google liable for a host of antitrust breaches.
Finally.
These cases involve important points of law — about Google’s online ad business, and Meta’s acquisition of WhatsApp and Instagram.
But they are, at base, about something more fundamental still.
They are about who is going to run this country.
The Constitution opens with the seminal words “We the People.”
But given the power Big Tech has amassed in recent years, one could be forgiven for thinking it starts with “We the Corporations.”
We have come to a moment of decision: Either the government will break up these behemoths and return to the people the power they have seized, or the corporations will effectively be the government for the nation.
It’s one or the other.
Think that’s too stark? Consider Big Tech’s behavior in just the last five years, since Zuckerberg came to my office to sing his industry’s praises.
The tech giants have, in no particular order, openly interfered in a federal election by suppressing accurate reporting on Hunter Biden’s laptop.
They have colluded with the Biden administration to censor Americans questioning vaccine mandates, or forced masking, or DEI in schools.
They have taken Americans’ personal information without their knowledge, and sold it without their consent.
They have worked to addict children: We know from whistleblowers like former Meta executive Sarah Wynn-Williams that Facebook understood their products hurt kids, especially young girls, and knew their platforms were cesspools of child sex abuse material.
But they buried the truth and lied about it in public.
The Big Tech companies have more power than any corporation on earth. Indeed, they have more power than any corporation in history.
And if we don’t act now, they will control our lives, and our country, altogether.
Ronald Reagan once said that sometimes there are simple solutions, just not easy ones.
The solution here is simple: We must take power from the corporations and return it to We the People.
How?
Enforce antitrust law to the hilt.
The recent antitrust cases are a major step in the right direction.
Take the April 17 Google verdict on advertising.
Ad revenue fuels everything these companies do, from designing ever-more-addictive products to censoring Americans’ speech.
The recent verdict may turn that spigot off.
That’s real progress.
The FTC’s case against Zuckerberg and Meta is significant, too.
If the FTC wins, it could force Meta to divest Instagram and WhatsApp, restoring competition to digital markets.
Antitrust law can be a powerful tool.
But we must do more.
We ought to empower citizens directly.
Antitrust cases can take years, even decades.
And we can’t always wait for the government to act.
That’s why I’ve proposed legislation to open the courtroom doors to every American harmed by these companies.
Let Americans who have been censored sue.
Let parents whose kids have been victimized by predators online sue.
Give Americans the same rights over tech — the right to get into court — that we enjoy vis-a-vis every other corporation in this country.
No more special protections for the tech barons.
Really, it’s all about giving citizens their rights back.
Cutting the tech companies down to size means people can speak more freely.
Giving ordinary citizens their day in court means the tech companies have to stop taking your personal information without payment or consent.
And breaking up the Big Tech-Big Government alliance means bad actors like the Biden administration can’t use the ginormous power of the corporations to do their censorious bidding.
We’ve been down this road before as a nation.
We’ve seen corporatists seize power and use it for their own gain.
In the Gilded Age, it was the railroads and Standard Oil — and back then, Theodore Roosevelt’s Republican Party knew what to do: They cut the robber barons down to size and returned the right of self-government to the people.
Republicans now should heed that example and do it again.
Josh Hawley represents Missouri in the US Senate.
