NBC News: Can anyone rein in Big Tech? Activists look to statehouses

November 9, 2021 Media

The battle over whether to break up Big Tech is heading to city halls and state capitals.

Frustrated with the pace of national change in Congress and the rest of Washington, some of the tech industry’s critics are paying more attention to state legislatures and city councils as places where they can curtail the power of companies they say are too dominant.

The American Economic Liberties Project, an advocacy group that opposes the concentration of economic power, said it was announcing a new push Tuesday with a report showing how many proposals are bubbling up at the state and local level.

“A lot of people see these gigantic corporations as entities that must be dealt with by the federal government, and the solutions have to come out of the federal government, and that just isn’t true,” said Pat Garofalo, the group’s director of state and local policy.

“There are ideas out there that don’t require Washington,” he said.