Biden’s FTC Can Do More Than Sue Tech Companies. It Can Regulate Them.

OTI's Christine Bannan wrote for Slate Future Tense's Future Agenda series, arguing the FTC should use its authority to define "unfair methods of competition" for tech platforms.

Although the FTC has had this authority since the agency’s creation in 1914, it has only issued a single antitrust rule in more than 100 years—due entirely to lack of leadership and years of inertia. (That rule was later repealed.)

This could change if President-elect Biden appoints new leadership interested in reviving virtually unused tools that could make the agency more effective. There are many anticompetitive practices in the tech industry that could be ripe for FTC rulemaking, but there are three in particular that the agency should consider defining as unfair methods of competition.