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Elizabeth Warren plans to break up Amazon, Facebook, and Google

Big Tech has "bulldozed competition, used our private information for profit, and tilted the playing field against everyone else," she said.
Elizabeth Warren plans to break up Amazon, Facebook, and Google

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Sen. Elizabeth Warren has long called for breaking up big banks, and now she wants to break up big tech companies.

The 2020 presidential candidate announced Friday that she has plans to break up tech giants like Amazon, Facebook, and Google.

It’s a bold idea from the Massachusetts progressive, and it’s sure to outrage massive tech companies that control a large amount of the world’s wealth. Warren’s announcement of the plan comes on the day of a rally in the Queens neighborhood that Amazon abandoned after a backlash against its plans to build a headquarters in the borough.

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Warren’s plan would appoint regulators to start breaking up companies that are becoming too big and therefore undermining healthy competition in the industry, according to the New York Times. Her plan would break up some mergers, such as those of Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram as well as Amazon and Whole Foods. Warren, a former Harvard law professor, would also push for legislation that forbids companies worth more than $25 billion from both owning a platform and participating in commerce that happens on that platform.

“Today’s big tech companies have too much power — too much power over our economy, our society, and our democracy.“

“Today’s big tech companies have too much power — too much power over our economy, our society, and our democracy. They’ve bulldozed competition, used our private information for profit, and tilted the playing field against everyone else. And in the process, they have hurt small businesses and stifled innovation,” Warren, 69, said in a blog post announcing the plan.

Warren’s vocal stance on the big banks during the financial crisis of 2008 made her a national figure and drove her successful 2012 Massachusetts Senate bid.

Her announcement is the latest in a series of progressive policy ideas on the candidate’s 2020 agenda, which also includes a wealth tax on the nation’s richest. Warren’s plan is another indication that Democrats are increasingly distancing themselves from their once-cozy relationship to Silicon Valley.

Warren, along with Sen. Bernie Sanders, is among the furthest-left candidates on the 2020 ticket.

Cover: 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Elizabeth Warren speaks to local residents during an organizing event, Friday, March 1, 2019, in Dubuque, Iowa. (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall)