We’ve been fighting each other while Big Tech gets away with murder. To win liberatory tech policy, we need a unified strategy and a clear division of labor.

This is a post from Evan Greer (she/they), director of Fight for the Future

The movement to hold Big Tech accountable is growing, but we’re struggling. As the clock runs out on this Congress, it looks increasingly likely that nothing will be done to rein in the abusive practices of Silicon Valley giants.

The stakes couldn’t be higher. Big Tech has colonized much of what we used to call the Internet, creating a near-monopoly on channels for speech and employing a surveillance-driven business model that’s wreaking havoc on democracy, eviscerating privacy and civil rights, and endangering the lives of the most vulnerable.

But last week, against the backdrop of the Biden-Trump rematch debate, House negotiations around the two “tech bills” that were most likely to move this Congress––the American Privacy Rights Act (APRA) and the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) went down in flames. It now seems almost certain that this Congress will conclude with nothing meaningful done on tech. To make matters worse, the Supreme Court just overturned the “Chevron Doctrine,” making it orders of magnitude more difficult to advance progressive tech priorities through regulatory agencies like the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau (CFPB). 

We’re in a bad spot. And we’re going to end up here again and again unless we address some of the fundamental structural shortcomings of the tech justice space. Our work is siloed. We are often fighting orthogonally rather than in parallel. And it’s in large part because many organizations in our small space are more accountable to project-based funders rather than we are to the communities most impacted. Our work has been largely reactive, chasing media cycles and shifting political winds rather than driving toward a coherent, collective vision.

Perhaps one of the clearest examples of this silo effect is in the divisions around the “kids bills.” 

Whether you’re for or against it, it’s hard to deny that KOSA has split the progressive tech policy coalition right down the middle. Human rights, civil liberties, press freedom, racial justice, and frontlines LGBTQ groups have been pitted against child protection, consumer rights, and tech accountability groups even though we all agree Big Tech should be regulated. Parents of trans kids who have suffered unimaginable harms offline have been pitted against parents of kids who suffered unimaginable harms online. 

And while our small but growing tech justice movement has wasted precious time and resources fighting over legislation that appears unlikely to pass, we’ve failed to grow our tent and build a vision for tech regulation that’s accountable to a broader progressive movement––to gig workers, immigrants, Black and brown communities, disabled folks, Palestinians resisting genocide, sex workers, and all those oppressed and exploited by Big Tech.

If we are going to win against a foe like Big Tech, we need a movement that’s bigger than just “tech policy” organizations. We need to take responsibility for building an analysis of how tech interacts with injustice into broader social movements for liberation. And we need to get more honest with ourselves about our substantive disagreements and past strategic failures.

We’re outgunned, but we can still win if we unite.

Any real strategy for taking on Big Tech must contend with this power imbalance: Big Tech has us outgunned in Washington, DC and in state houses across the country. They have money to burn, and can flood the zone by straight up purchasing influence and spinning up astroturf operations. 

We all know our tech justice sector is under-resourced in comparison. But grassroots movements in coordination with civil society have overcome corporate lobbying in the past. 

We can win against the odds, and meaningfully address the harms of Big Tech while protecting the human rights of the most marginalized. But our young movement needs a wake up call: we have to stop fighting each other, build consensus around a coherent strategy, and strike hard and fast if we are going to take down Big Tech and build something better for future generations.

The best time to get on the same page about that strategy was years ago. The second best time is now. 

As a movement we need to determine where Big Tech is weak enough for us to land a real blow. Congress is only one piece of the puzzle, but for organizations focused on Federal policy it’s clear we need a strategy that addresses the root cause of harms while building power for the communities most impacted. If passing strong and impactful legislation is going to be part of that strategy, we have some serious soul searching to do.

We’ve been divided, but not conquered yet.

For the last several years, the “big tent” of the movement to take on Big Tech in Congress has been divided into roughly three overlapping and sometimes opposing camps: groups fighting for “kids bills” like KOSA and COPPA 2.0, groups fighting for a comprehensive privacy bill, and groups fighting for antitrust bills like the American Innovation and Choice Online Act (AICOA) and the Open App Markets Act (OAMA). Others in our tent have been focused on securing funding for affordable broadband, attempting to reform government surveillance laws, and other important but disparate priorities.

If we had all worked together on a coordinated strategy starting a couple years ago, there’s a real chance we could have passed some really strong data privacy, algorithmic accountability, and anti-monopoly legislation this Congress, even in this hyper-partisan environment and facing off against an opponent like Big Tech. 

Instead, so much of our power has been turned against each other over deeply controversial bills like KOSA, age gating legislation, and the EARN IT Act. Focusing on harms to children has long been a successful strategy for building bipartisan agreement in Congress, but “think of the children” appeals have also been used to advance dangerous legislation that doesn’t actually help, and is increasingly used by outright fascists intent on controlling children not helping them.

Although KOSA has a lot of momentum and emotion around it, after the House implosion last week it seems unlikely to pass. It is supported by a passionate group of parents and advocates who truly believe that it will address some of the worst harms on the Internet: harms to children. Harms that are real, deadly, and caused by the alienation and brutality of unfettered profiteering.

These parents have done incredible work telling their stories directly to lawmakers and to the media and have raised the overall profile of the issue by several orders of magnitude. And they have helped draw attention specifically to how platform design features and algorithmic recommendations cause harm. I applaud them for their work. 

We can disagree strongly and still struggle toward shared goals

I have been a loud and vocal critic of KOSA. I am aligned with experts who think KOSA would make kids less safe by cutting them off from access to lifesaving online resources and community. I am generally of the belief that we best protect kids by empowering them rather than by shielding them from learning about the harms of the world. But I am deeply sympathetic to the good-faith advocates who have seen it as the best path toward regulating Big Tech and addressing real-world harms. 

Unfortunately, KOSA is also supported by right wing extremists like the Heritage Foundation who explicitly want to use laws like this to implement “book ban” and “don’t say gay” type policies on social media platforms, censoring content related to LGBTQ issues, reproductive health care, anti-racism, you name it. Even with the changes that have been made, KOSA could still enable a second Trump administration, for example, to bully social media platforms into suppressing content by insinuating it’s harmful to children. 

Cutting kids off from information and discussion of difficult topics doesn’t make them safer. It makes them less safe. For trans kids in rural areas, teenagers seeking information about how to protect their sexual health or seek reproductive care, and so many others, access to online information and community––even on deeply imperfect Big Tech platforms––can be a literal life saver.

After large national LGBTQ organizations bowed out of KOSA debate, LGBTQ youth took the reins and secured significant changes to the bill. They are backed by a ragtag coalition of civil liberties, human rights, and frontline, often trans-led, LGBTQ organizations. LGBTQ youth have done incredible work raising their concerns with legislation like KOSA, age verification mandates, bills that kick kids off social media entirely, and bills that either explicitly or inadvertantly would censor LGBTQ content online. These self-organized young people coordinating in Discord servers and posting prolifically on TikTok and in queer fanfiction channels and subreddits and artist networks have helped drive hundreds of thousands of calls and emails to lawmakers on behalf of the community, connection, and hope that keeps them alive. 

These young people recognize the harms of Big Tech and its surveillance driven business models. But they also want to defend their ability to use social media as a tool to find supportive community, speak out about the injustices they see in the world around them, and fight for the kind of future they want to see. Right now, young people across the country are using social media, encrypted messaging apps, and other imperfect but important tools to organize against the genocide in Gaza, to speak up about impending climate catastrophe, and to mourn classmates lost to gun violence.

We need policies that hurt Big Tech without taking away the tools young people are using to build a better future.

We also need policies that will hold up in court. The breaking SCOTUS decision on Netchoice case could not be clearer: tech regulations focused on speech are going to fail in court. We need to get smart about policies that accomplish the goals we share without running into the brick wall of the First Amendment.

We had a chance at strong privacy, but fumbled.

While KOSA has been stalled out in the Senate, the House has repeatedly made it clear it wanted to move on a privacy bill first, a bill that would protect everyone, including kids. The American Privacy Rights Act (APRA) was the compromise version of ADPPA, which was the compromise version of some other compromise version of some other compromise version of a bipartisan comprehensive privacy bill. 

Look, APRA was never the strong privacy bill of our dreams. It had some solid bones: a model based on limiting how much data companies can collect about us in the first place rather than just giving us more boxes to check, strong civil rights and algorithmic discrimination language, and measures that would interrupt some of the harms exacerbated by surveillance driven artificial intelligence. It also had real problems: it paused the FTC rulemaking on commercial surveillance, for no real reason other than to appease Republicans who hate Lina Kahn. It preempted state laws around privacy and kneecapped the FCC’s ability to address privacy issues..

Now, APRA has been gutted. In the latest version of the bill, the crucial civil rights language was axed. Many in our coalition already saw the bill as only slightly better than the status quo. Now, unless the civil rights language is restored and other aspects of the bill are improved, APRA 2.0 is worse than nothing at all. Privacy advocates are now in the unenviable position of opposing the only privacy bill that has a chance of moving this congress.

We’re being strung along because we haven’t built enough power to demand what we want and get it. Even our “champions” in Congress decided to cave to the demands of industry and the far right. They are more scared of them than they are of us. That has to change.

To build the power we need to win, we have to struggle together

No matter what happens during the next US election, the path forward looks more difficult, not less. Surveillance-driven, for-profit tech companies are exacerbating existing injustice and causing real harm to some of the most vulnerable people in our society. They’ve amassed unprecedented wealth and have been effectively using it to purchase power and influence, defeating every attempt so far to meaningfully regulate them and rein in their abuses. 

When you’re outnumbered you can’t spread out. If we are going to take on the many-headed hydra of Big Tech and win, we have one shot. We need to stop fighting each other with opposing blog posts and op-eds, sit down, and come up with a strategic, feasible, and sustainably resourced plan to fight for legislation and regulatory action that accomplishes our shared goals without dividing our coalition. What’s the bill targeting Big Tech that only Big Tech and corporate lobbyists oppose? That’s how we know we’re on the right track. 

There are meaningful actions Congress and Federal agencies can take that would be supported by the vast majority of people and civil society organizations who want to take on Big Tech––and that don’t run afoul of the First Amendment. But we’re only going to succeed  if we get our house in order, and coalesce around a unified set of demands for lawmakers.

Time is running out. We can’t let Big Tech divide us any more. We may have missed our window this Congress. We can’t stay in crisis mode reacting to a runaway industry’s excesses. We must build a vision for liberatory regulation of Big Tech that’s rooted in the needs of the most vulnerable and driven by the vision of organizations accountable to the people most impacted. 

Funders, civil society groups, and social movement leaders need to prioritize consensus building and strategic planning. I’m not talking about more consultants and long, drawn out processes. 

I’m talking about having frank conversations about the state of play in Congress, the states, and Federal agencies, being honest with each other about where we substantively disagree and where we have strategic alignment, and struggle together toward a coherent and shared vision for short term, high-impact action that addresses harm and reduces Big Tech’s power while increasing the power of our growing movement. 

No single piece of legislation is going to bring down Big Tech and usher in the democratically controlled Internet we want. But if can struggle together toward a more accountable strategy, we can land a solid blow that reduces the tech industry’s power and grows our movement, 

The People’s Tech Project’s national tech justice coherence process, which is making us aim at the root causes rather than the symptoms, the recent Take Back Tech conference, which is a convening space for the grassroots left of the movement most impacted by these issues, and other cohering events and gatherings are an essential piece of this. We need more, and faster. Let’s go.

Let’s fight it out. Let’s have the arguments we need to have. Let’s get clear on a strategy that unites rather than divides us. And let’s do it fast.