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WASHINGTON — “Facebook and Big Tech are facing a Big Tobacco moment,” Connecticut Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal said this week. informant testified about how the social media company’s products harm young people.

“I think that’s a fitting analogy,” Wyoming Republican Senator Cynthia Lummis later added.

The whistleblower’s testimony and the thousands of internal documents he shared with lawmakers created an unusual bipartisan bonhomie in a divided Washington. The senators said it was time for Congress to unite around new regulations to rein in the company and perhaps the tech industry as a whole.

But if what faces Big Technology Something like what happened to Big Tobacco – a reckoning over the damage the industry is doing to society and especially to children – is likely to be a complicated, years-long road to new rules and regulations with no guaranteed outcome.

Washington is considering multiple proposals to curb the industry and make it more accountable. Some lawmakers have called for a law that protects tech companies from lawsuits to be reworked and amended so that companies can be held accountable if their software increases malicious conversation. Another idea would force social media companies to share much more information about their software, which is often a black box, and data on how people interact with their services.

Lawmakers have proposed creating a new federal agency dedicated to overseeing tech companies or expanding the power of the Federal Trade Commission. They passed stronger laws to regulate children’s privacy and safety and the behavioral advertising business models of Facebook and Google. And a handful of bills came out of a House committee to overhaul antitrust laws to make the public less dependent on a small number of tech companies.

But getting past any of these options is a steep climb. Tech companies are swimming in wealth and using them to influence legislators. largest army of lobbyists Of any industry in Washington, dozens of privacy and speech bills have stalled in Congress in recent years.

The issues are also complex. Some say that sharing much more data with researchers can harm people’s privacy. Attempts to narrowly regulate content on platforms like Facebook face free speech concerns.

Perhaps the best chance of putting pressure on the industry is for President Biden and his administration to act by force. It has yet to put its weight behind any bills, but it has placed some of the industry’s leading critics in top regulatory jobs. lina han, the head of the FTC, and Jonathan KanterThe candidate to head the Justice Department’s antitrust division has promised to curb corporate power.

“Facebook took a big hit this week, but just like the tobacco industry, it could take many hits,” said Allan Brandt, a Harvard professor and expert on the rise and fall of the tobacco industry.

More than 50 years have passed since the first published research on the dangers of smoking, and more than a decade since an whistleblower shared internal documents proving that tobacco companies withheld information about the badness of their products before a meaningful government was formed. arrangement, he said.

“There will be regulations for Facebook and other tech companies,” said Mr Brandt, “but I’m skeptical about the path to successful regulation any time soon.”

The European Union has been more aggressive towards tech companies than the US for years on issues such as antitrust and data privacy. Facebook informant’s statement last week, Frances Haugen, heavy calls Adopting proposals that will impose stricter rules on how Facebook and other internet companies control their platforms and add stricter competition rules to reduce their dominance over the digital economy. Laws could be passed as early as next year.

But the biggest hurdle to the legislature in Washington is that Democrats and Republicans view technology power and social media conversations differently. While Republicans argue that Facebook, Google, Twitter and other social media platforms censor conservative views, Democrats want to address the spread of misinformation and the amplification of harmful political discourse.

And when it comes to questions about whether companies should be splintered, many Democrats see antitrust action as a way to slow down the most powerful tech platforms and address data privacy, security and misinformation. Some Republicans say there is too much competition in the industry and breaking up companies would be an example of government overreach.

“Just because we hold the hammer of antitrust law doesn’t mean we have to see every concern as a nail so we don’t risk whipping up our entire economy,” Christine Wilson, a Republican member of the FTC, told Congress recently.

Facebook, Google and Twitter said they welcome greater government oversight, backing stricter data privacy rules and an agency dedicated to regulating the tech industry. But they also warn that many state and federal proposals to strengthen antitrust laws, curb data collection and hold companies accountable for harmful speech could backfire.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the whistleblower’s claims that the company prioritized profits over security were “extremely unreasonable”. The company also dismissed comparisons with the tobacco industry.

“It’s a ridiculous comparison,” said Facebook spokesperson Andy Stone. “Social media helps people connect and small businesses thrive. Instead of making false equivalencies, the focus should be on updated regulation that addresses privacy, data portability, content standards and choices.”

However, many MPs said that comparing sectors is not an exaggeration and is actually instructive.

State investigators discovered tobacco company RJ Reynolds’ secret marketing plans to use cartoon mascot Joe Camel to turn children into smokers, a finding that helped support lawsuits against the company and mobilize lawmakers.

Some of the internal documents Ms Haugen shared with lawmakers showed that many young people felt worse about their body image after spending time on Facebook’s photo-sharing app Instagram, and at times expressed plans to harm themselves. Other documents showed the company was investigating how it could market to even younger children.

Mr. Blumenthal, who successfully filed a lawsuit against Big Tobacco when he was Connecticut Attorney General in the 1990s, said the importance of the documents struck him immediately.

“It was a lightbulb and all the memories came back with the tobacco companies’ strategy papers for reaching middle school students,” he said. “It was as if you could rearrange the words and replace them with ‘tobacco’.”

He also noted that the technology is not exactly like the tobacco industry. Tech has broad legal protections that prevent state attorneys from suing companies the way they do.

Article 230 of the Code of Communications EthicsA law passed in 1996 protects companies from most lawsuits related to comments, photos, and other content users post on their sites. As a result, if one of a user’s posts is damaged, the public – and the government – have little recourse against firms.

Mr. Blumenthal supports a revision of this law to reduce these protections. It has pushed through a bill that would remove the shield if services allowed images of child abuse to spread. Other lawmakers have proposed removing legal protection when companies’ algorithms increase it by automatically promoting, recommending, and ranking content that violates certain anti-terrorism and civil rights laws.

Ms. Haugen said such changes, with the possibility of litigation, would force Facebook and other social media companies to stop using software that prioritizes engagement and the promotion of the most harmful content.

But Mr. Blumenthal seemed to accept that any change would not be immediate.

“This battle will not be fought in the courtroom,” he said.

“Congress must act,” said Ms. Lummis. “I keep all options on the table, but even in this polarizing environment, the bilateral concern we have here is encouraging.”