Bytes: Week in Review — DOJ vs. Google, a bid to undercut internet safety, and X users flock to Bluesky

The sun is shining on Blue Sky this week. From American Public Media, this is Marketplace Tech. I'm Megan McCarty-Korino.

The social media app Blue Sky is flying high this week as users disenchanted with Elon Musk's ex have fled that platform after the election. That's just one of the topics for today's marketplace tech bites week in review. We'll also get into big tech's big money lobbying effort to slow down a federal bill to protect kids online.

But first, the latest in the potential Google breakup. This week, the Department of Justice proposed forcing the company to sell its Chrome browser. It's one possible resolution to an antitrust case that has already ruled Google's search business a monopoly. Here with more is Maria Curie. She's a tech policy reporter at Axios.

This is only one remedy of several that the government has proposed. And it is essentially saying that one way to fix this issue is to have Google sell off Chrome, which is obviously a huge way that Google makes ad money. But there are other proposals in play, for example, blocking these contracts between Google and Apple to have Chrome be the default browser.

is another example. And so we're still a long ways from seeing what actually happens. You know, this is going to go through months and months of back and forth.

So speaking of months and months of back and forth, well, in two months, we will have a new president. President-elect Donald Trump hasn't really been super pointed about his position on this, but he has expressed some skepticism about the idea of breaking up Google. I mean, what do we know about how a new president could complicate these proceedings?

Not just a new president, but this specific one, right? So I think that president elect Trump in various policy areas will kind of go back and forth and speaks off the cuff. And this is something that companies across the board in the tech industry are grappling with right now.

And so what we can do is look at his past statements he has gone after Google for allegedly being biased against him. He then has said that a breakup of Google may not be the best move. And so it's really a wait and see approach to see how he would handle this I think another

The factor in all of this that I have been hearing is whatever the Biden administration has, quote unquote, accomplished is something that he probably wants his own name on. And so maybe it's a repackaging of this so that he could potentially say, hey, this is actually an accomplishment of my administration, not the previous one. But it remains to be seen. And in two months, we'll have a new president. And the timeline of the case itself is still going to be underway.

Yeah, interestingly, a lot of these antitrust cases that we have been talking about under the Biden Justice Department were started during the previous Trump administration, right? That's right. And so we will get reminders of that, I am sure, as this is underway, because this really is a matter of taking credit and saying, this is something that I did for you.

But two months from now, this is still a long ways away. There's going to be a trial that happens for these remedies in April. And then in August is when we'll get a final decision. And then after that, this is going to be appealed and potentially go to the Supreme Court.

And there you also have a president-elect Trump's influence. And so it's a long process. It's very up in the air. I don't think that the takeaway right now is Chrome is absolutely going to be sold off. This would be an extremely dramatic outcome for an antitrust case. I mean, I read, you know, nothing like this has kind of been proposed since the

Microsoft case back in 2000, like give us a sense of how dramatic it would be to break up Google in this way to split off Chrome. I think that it would really dramatically impact Google's business model and the way that it produces money, that it produces revenue. So it would be very impactful for the company itself for consumers. This is a product that we are used to using that many of us use. And at least according to the company, such as sale would impact the quality of the product.

that remains to be seen. We don't necessarily know that that's true, but it could impact the company itself and all of the consumers that use it.

All right, now on to another attempt by government to regulate big tech. We are talking about the Kids Online Safety Act. This is a bill that would create something called a duty of care for internet companies to protect kids. It has been in the works in Congress for years. A version passed the Senate this past summer with bipartisan support, but it's kind of

hit the skids in the house. And recent reporting from the Wall Street Journal gives a hint as to maybe why. Love being efforts from Big Tech have totaled about $90 million over the last few years. Maria, remind us exactly what this bill would do and kind of where it stands.

What the bill does is it imposes a responsibility on the companies to make sure that what the user experiences for minors is not as problematic, whether it's content that pushes food eating disorders or body dysmorphia or all of the different things that we've been hearing about in terms of social media's impact.

on young people's mental health. It basically says companies need to take greater responsibility for this. And it makes them, you know, subject to legal repercussions, whether it's through attorneys general or the federal trade commission. And so this is something that has really gotten stuck on the Hill because of

various concerns in terms of how this is going to actually impact the content that people are seeing online. And I think what the Wall Street Journal did was kind of put into writing what has been talked about for a while now, which is that these companies spend millions of dollars, I think it was $90 million over the last three years, just between Google and meta.

You know, they looked through the lobbying disclosure forms and saw that this was one of the areas that they were lobbying heavily on. And that does have an impact on lawmakers. And so you have lawmakers saying, well, look at all this lobbying, but a counterargument to that is lawmakers also have a responsibility to look beyond that money that is being spent and do what they think is right.

Well, perhaps at the urging of all these lobbying efforts, we've seen kind of criticism of the bill pop up, both on the left and the right, often around kind of free speech issues. What are kind of the the volleying arguments?

Well, it's a content issue that you have companies using on both ends to their advantage. In meetings with conservatives, you have these lobbyists talking about how this could lead to the censorship of being able to express pro-life comments and in pro-life positions that this could get in the way of that. And then in meetings with liberals and Democrats, you have them noting this could lead to less content that could support the LGBTQ community.

And so at the end of the day, you have this, the backers of these bills saying this has nothing to do with content. This isn't going to lead to any content moderation. This is really just about imploring the companies to take greater responsibility. We'll be right back. You're listening to Marketplace Tech, I'm Megan McCarty-Korino. We're back with Maria Curie, tech policy reporter at Axios.

All right, now let's talk about the app of the week blue sky, which has emerged as a big winner as kind of disenchanted ex users have been fleeing the platform after the election. This app, it kind of looks very similar to X or Twitter, but it is

decentralized and open source. It's added hundreds of thousands of users in the last week, reached the top spot for Apple App Store downloads and surpassed 20 million users. Let's take a listen to what blue sky CEO J. Grayber said about it on CNN this week.

I think social media should be basically common infrastructure that society gets to use and evolve it as society evolves. Building a more democratic form of social media to reflect a democratic society. And we've been making sure that the experience here stays a place where productive conversations can happen and then people can layer on top of that. So it's stackable because anyone else can come in and also run a moderation service.

Maria, there have been a number of alternatives to Twitter slash X that have emerged. What's so special about Blue Sky? Why are users thronging to it right now?

I think it might just be a reaction to the moment. And seeing this election, the way that it played out, you have a president-elect that is very close to Elon Musk. And I think people are desperate for a new platform where there is some sort of content moderation, in fact, checking. And I think what's interesting about this platform and the reason why it's exploded, because to your point, there have been other alternatives that simply have not taken off.

is they're not avoiding political discourse the way that maybe threads has. They are very much doing it, but then giving the power to the people on it to moderate what happens. And so I think that's an approach that's more palatable for a lot of people right now.

Yeah, I think that the question of content moderation is an interesting one. It's obviously something that I think a lot of users flocking to this app are interested in more of given the situation on X since Elon Musk took over. Right now, the company is still very small. It's a staff, I think, of like 20 people. They have big plans for content moderation. I mean, what kind of an effect does it have for an app to see this kind of extremely rapid growth

But it's still a pretty small operation. They're gonna have to hire a bunch of more people, I guess. Yeah, and it poses like a real competition to X. And it's interesting how this kind of just happens in the moment when people decide they're ready for something new.

But I think the free speech absolutist approach for that Elon Musk has espoused is probably not going to continue to be acceptable to a lot of people in this country. Are you on blue sky? No, but in general, I'm not the first person to flock to a new social media site. I don't tweet. I'm just too lazy. But maybe I should be for research purposes.

Yeah, I was a little intimidated by it's just a little bit more complicated. And anytime you move to a new social media platform, you got to do the follows. I understand blue sky has some starter packs where you can kind of get in, you know, with some, some follows right off the bat. But it's an investment. And I like, I also like to sort of wait on the sidelines and see if it's worth my investment. Yeah, I'll leave it to the early adopters to let me know how it goes.

that was Maria Curie and Axios. You can find the full video of this episode of Marketplace Tech Bites Week in Review on our YouTube channel Marketplace APM. And subscribe if you haven't already to watch us every Friday. Jesus Alvarado produced this episode. Rosie Hughes and Daniel Shin also produce our show. Gary O'Keefe and Becca Weinman are our engineers. Daisy Palacios is the senior producer. Kelly Silvera is our executive producer. I'm Megan McCarty-Korino, and that's Marketplace Tech.

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