Biden’s tech agenda gets a reality check as Elon Musk buys Twitter

The Biden administration arrived in Washington with an ambitious agenda for taming Big Tech, which it portrayed as concentrating too much power in the hands of a few billionaires — the moguls of a new, digital Gilded Age. Elon Musk’s $44 billion deal to buy Twitter has put that critique into sharp relief, underscoring how badly Biden’s tech agenda has stalled in the 15 months since taking the White House. The world’s richest person has bought one of its most influential social media platforms — and Washington’s hands are largely tied. Musk, notorious for flouting regulators and running afoul of the Securities and Exchange Commission, will wield enormous discretion over thorny decisions about what content stays on and off the social network, and how the company handles the data privacy of its millions of users. By taking the company private, Musk will be subject to even less scrutiny than powerful executives of other publicly traded companies, such as Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Lawmakers now find themselves stymied, after failing for years to implement guardrails on social media companies that might force greater accountability of Musk. The deal does not present obvious antitrust conflicts, exposing the limits of Congress’s recent focus on regulating the largest tech platforms.