The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is preparing to meet with state attorneys general to discuss concerns about dominant technology platforms, including Facebook Inc and Alphabet Inc’s Google, Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry said on Thursday.
“What we have here is different layers of problems all surrounding big tech as a whole,” Landry told Bloomberg Television in an interview. “These are issues that attorney generals around the country on both sides of the aisle have been discussing for quite some time now.”
Bloomberg reported that a group of attorneys general is investigating possible anti-trust or consumer protection breaches by Google.
The commission is also probing Facebook over the Cambridge Analytica Ltd scandal, in which a British political consultancy with ties to US President Donald Trump’s presidential campaign obtained the data of millions of Facebook users without their consent.
That breach spawned multiple state inquiries.
The meeting with the commission was originally scheduled for last week, but was being rescheduled, Landry said.
States frequently conduct investigations alongside their federal counterparts, such as the commission or US Department of Justice’s anti-trust division.
Joining forces allows the states to benefit by sharing resources and information, potentially achieving outcomes — especially when giant corporations are involved — that would be difficult to obtain on their own.
The commission did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Landry, who said he has been part of “a number of discussions” about Google with his state counterparts, outlined concerns, including the company’s dominant role in the online ad ecosystem.
Google, the world’s largest digital ad seller, also owns many of the systems for the buying and selling of online ads.
Landry compared that to a bank owning a stock exchange.
“Would the FTC allow [J.P. Morgan] Chase [& Co] or Goldman Sachs [Group Inc] to own the NASDAQ?” Landry said. “The answer to that would be absolutely not.”
As criticism of the large technology platforms becomes increasingly bipartisan, US Senator Elizabeth Warren, who is seeking the US Democratic Party’s presidential nomination, has proposed stopping big online companies that own marketplaces from participating in them.
“I think it may be a road that may have to be traveled on,” Landry said of Warren’s breakup proposals. “I think that attorney generals around the country are leaving all of the tools in the toolbox.”
Meanwhile, US regulators have said that digital advertising practices at Facebook breach housing law and that they are reviewing whether ads placed by Twitter Inc and Google also discriminate against those seeking a place to live.
The US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) on Thursday said that Facebook was enabling and encouraging bias based on race and religion, as well as sex, by restricting who can see housing-related ads on its platforms and across the Internet.
It also has sent letters to Twitter and Google inquiring about the advertising systems for their sites and products, HUD spokesman Brian Sullivan said.
“Facebook is discriminating against people based upon who they are and where they live,” US Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Ben Carson said. “Using a computer to limit a person’s housing choices can be just as discriminatory as slamming a door in someone’s face.”
The social network allowed those advertising housing to exclude people it classified as parents, non-US-born, non-Christian, interested in accessibility and Hispanic culture, as well as other group’s deemed protected classes, HUD said in a statement.
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