What Hakeem Jeffries’s ascent in the House means for Silicon Valley

Nancy Pelosi, whose wealthy congressional district in San Francisco includes the headquarters of some of the world’s largest tech companies, was never known as a staunch critic of Silicon Valley. While the 82-year-old outgoing House speaker has expressed support for some of the Democratic Party’s most ambitious tech legislation in recent years, she’s also been accused of using her agenda-setting power to slow-walk those bills and prevent them from becoming law. 

That could change with the recent election of New York Representative Hakeem Jeffries as the new House minority leader. The 52-year-old Jeffries, who has been in Congress since 2013, sits on subcommittees covering antitrust and internet law, where he’s championed regulations that could put Big Tech on the back foot. The congressman’s core constituents aren’t tech workers, but rather residents of working-class Brooklyn neighborhoods where the median income is about half that of the areas that elected Pelosi. 

The GOP will control the next Congress. But its razor-thin majority suggests power could flip back to Democrats in coming elections, and that would put Jeffries in the driver’s seat. Based on what we know of Jeffries’s record so far, we should expect to see a more confrontational approach on Big Tech, regardless of which party is on top.

JEFFRIES HAS BEEN AGGRESSIVE ON ANTITRUST

Jeffries has long called on Congress to prevent tech giants from freely gobbling up their competitors. 

At an antitrust subcommittee hearing last March, Jeffries used sports analogies to suggest Facebook’s acquisition of Instagram shouldn’t have been allowed. “I don’t think the NFL would permit the Kansas City Chiefs to merge with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers,” he said. And, “It would seem to me impossible to see a scenario where the NBA would allow the Lakers to merge with the Boston Celtics because of the fundamental unfairness that that would create. [So] why in the world would our laws permit Facebook to be able to purchase a competitor like Instagram possibly to the detriment of the U.S. consumer?”

That June, Jeffries introduced the Platform Competition and Opportunity Act as part of a sweeping package of Big Tech regulation bills approved by the Judiciary Committee (and fiercely opposed by tech giants). Jeffries’s bill won support from some Republicans on the committee, but was opposed by a few Democrats—and never received a floor vote. Still, the bill offers insight into Jeffries’s stance: If passed, it would have outlawed large online platforms from entering into mergers that eliminate competitors or reinforce monopoly power, and shifted the burden to the firms to prove that their acquisitions would not harm competition. 

Jeffries also supported the other bills in the package, including the Ending Platform Monopolies Act, which would have banned tech platforms from using their leverage to “disadvantage” competitors from using the platform; the American Innovation and Choice Online Act, which would have outlawed platform operators from promoting their own products and services over those of other users; and the Augmenting Compatibility and Competition by Enabling Service Switching Act, which would have required platforms to maintain interoperability with one another, and allow users to move their data to those platforms if desired. 

JEFFRIES HAS CHIPPED AWAY AT SECTION 230

Under a 1996 federal law called Section 230, tech platforms are shielded from liability for the content their users publish and for moderation decisions. Both Democrats and Republicans have called for reforming the law—and Jeffries has supported some measures that would weaken it. 

In a 2017 hearing, Jeffries called online sex trafficking “a scourge that should be addressed by any means necessary in order to eradicate it, in the context of Backpage.com and beyond”—referring to websites that sex workers relied on for finding and screening clients. The following year, he helped pass SESTA/FOSTA (the Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act and the Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act), which created a Section 230 exemption exposing Backpage and other websites to criminal liability for any sex trafficking conducted on their platforms—effectively shutting those pages down. 

Sex workers have slammed the law for making their jobs much more dangerous. Jeffries has claimed to “understand the concerns sex workers have with the law” and recently pledged support for the Safe Sex Workers Study Act, a bill that would commission a study of the harms of SESTA/FOSTA.

Earlier this year, Jeffries also cosponsored the Online Firearms Marketplaces Act, which would have removed Section 230’s protections for digital platforms that facilitate illegal gun sales. But that bill attracted scant attention and never advanced. 

IN THE NEXT FEW YEARS

As the soon-to-be-minted House minority leader, Jeffries will ultimately be playing second fiddle to whoever the chamber elects as speaker in a few weeks. Representative Kevin McCarthy, the GOP frontrunner for the post, isn’t exactly an anti-Big Tech firebrand: Unlike some of his colleagues, the California congressman has shied away from attacking tech giants on antitrust, preferring to focus on issues like alleged political censorship and child safety. 

Jeffries, meanwhile, is trying to shore up support. He’s been schmoozing with fellow Brooklynite and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, and, despite launching a PAC last year to help moderate candidates thwart progressives in Democratic primaries, he’s since reached out to members of “the Squad,” including Representatives Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, Ayanna Pressley, Ilhan Omar, and Rashida Tlaib. Should Democrats regain the House in coming years, those relationships could help Jeffries win the speaker’s gavel—and possibly usher in a new era of tech regulation.