Rep. Marie Newman calls for regulation of Big Tech companies

U.S. Rep. Marie Newman joined calls to regulate social media companies in light of an ex-Facebook employee speaking out against the company’s practices.

Newman, D-La Grange, said in an email to supporters that Facebook’s hours-long outage on Monday shows “how reliant we are on Big Tech.”

“Still, these same companies are pushing harmful and hateful misinformation out every day, for profit,” she wrote.

Newman added “We need to regulate Big Tech to stop the spread of misinformation, and we need strong fighters in Congress who are willing to stand up and push for consumer protections so our data isn’t for sale on the dark web.”

She pointed to the lack of updates to data privacy laws for the internet and argued for the need to change laws regulating Big Tech, which has “gone largely unchecked for decades.”