With Bedoya on Board, the FTC Should Move Swiftly to Stop Monopolistic Power
WASHINGTON – President Biden announced this morning that he will nominate privacy expert and Georgetown University law professor, Alvaro Bedoya, for the third Democratic commissioner of the Federal Trade Commission.
In response, Barry Lynn, executive director of the Open Markets Institute, issued the following statement:
In choosing Alvaro Bedoya to serve on the FTC, President Biden is doubling down on his commitment to breaking Big Tech’s power and control over the U.S. economy and democracy. Bedoya has demonstrated a willingness to go head to head with the most powerful of corporations and that he knows how to defend a democratic and just society in the 21st century.
At Open Markets, we have long said that a key to breaking the power of Google, Facebook, and Amazon is to apply common carrier rules to ensure these corporations offer the same service at the same price to all people and companies who depend on them. We are therefore especially excited by Mr. Bedoya’s long experience helping to develop the “net neutrality” rules that Americans applied to internet service providers in 2015. We also welcome Mr. Bedoya’s extensive work highlighting the dangers of surveillance by private monopolists, which poses one of the most direct threats to the liberty and wellbeing of America’s citizens and businesses.
In America today, private monopoly poses one of the greatest domestic threats to democracy and individual liberty. It is vital that the FTC’s commissioners use all the powers of the agency to their fullest to address this crisis. This requires both a willingness to learn and a willingness to act with vision, boldness, and resolve.
With Bedoya on board, along with the other strong FTC commissioners, we’re looking forward to more swift action from the FTC to protect American workers, communities, and democracy from harmful, monopolistic practices such as invasive surveillance, exclusionary contracts, non-compete clauses, and mega-mergers.
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