California’s Big Tech giants deserve to have new restrictions placed on their wealth and reach, the state’s Gov. Gavin Newsom told "Axios on HBO" Monday, warning that Google, Facebook and others will soon get "steamrolled" by federal regulations.
"Are they going to lead in that conversation and engage in it?” said Newsom, whose state relies heavily on Big Tech profits to fund it. “Or are they going to get completely steamrolled? By current pace, they are going to get steamrolled," stressing that big changes will hit them at both the state and federal level.
He added that "Technology is playing a bigger role I would argue than globalization" in disrupting jobs and stirring populism. "It’s going to get exponentially worse."
Newsom, who is friends with several tech moguls, refused to say whether Google and Facebook should be broken up, as Sen. Elizabeth Warren and others are demanding, but he appeared more open to regulating tech platforms such as media companies and holding them responsible for their content.
Newsom criticized Facebook for allowing the doctored video of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to remain on its platform, saying “It’s made up... It's done for political purposes.”
The governor said he backs a data dividend that forces tech platforms to pay California residents for money they make off selling their data, although he acknowledged he was unsure how big those checks should be.
There has been a relatively sudden change in attitudes of both consumer and U.S. regulators towards Big Tech, Cnet reported.
After a mostly hands-off approach, both groups are now far more suspicious of these corporations and more interested in what they do with an individual’s data, following the scandal of Facebook's lax privacy policies.
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