The Case for App Stores to Age Gate Harmful Online Products

Today’s digital age requires parents to fend off a tech-induced health crisis, contending against the allure of products engineered by the most powerful corporations in history to be maximally addictive to kids. The concerns with respect to online harms are very well documented. Indeed, there are seemingly countless studies, congressional hearings, and lawsuits all pointing out the unique impact that tech services have on childhood development and their mental health.

The question resides on what to do about it given that it is unlikely that tech companies will proffer any genuine solutions to quell the concern. Worse, large tech companies, such as Apple, Google, Amazon, and Meta, may even be intentionally perpetuating the problem.

Given this, a government solution is necessary even with various online child safety laws on the books. And, indeed, states have been the pointed tip of the spear on that front. Most of the state-based solutions impose safety measures on platforms. However, recent attempts to impose restrictions on kids’ use of addictive online products, like social media, have been thwarted by courts for being too broad or vague making them liable for swallowing up protected adult speech in its wake. 

What the Google Search Case Means for Antitrust Enforcement

The Google Search results are in. No, not that kind of search result—the ruling in the D.C. District Court case United States v. Google, which asks what to do with Google’s illegal monopoly on internet search traffic.

This case had all the makings of a summer blockbuster. Indeed, the previews were spectacular, with Judge Amit Mehta holding quite concretely last year that “Google is a monopolist, and it has acted as one to maintain its monopoly.” That opinion sent shockwaves throughout the tech community and Wall Street.

Increasing the heat, Donald Trump‘s Department of Justice (DOJ) called for strong remedies that would have done a lot to quell the concern. The DOJ asked Google to divest from Chrome and Android; share search data with competitors to help them scale up; enact measures to prevent self-preferencing; and stop paying Apple for default status on its Safari browser—the second-largest mobile browser outside of Chrome.

The anticipation of Judge Mehta’s follow-up decision, released September 2, led many to anticipate that “the case could change how tech giants are able to do business and, in effect, how the internet is run.” Others made grand comparisons to the U.S. breaking up AT&T in the ’80s. Several outlets and pundits claimed the outcome of this case would “break up” Google.

So…did it?

The Antitrust Cases That Matter

Strong antitrust enforcement is key to any true conservative platform, owing to our natural skepticism toward concentrated authority, public or private. President Theodore Roosevelt broke up Standard Oil. The Reagan administration broke up AT&T. Republican Senator John Sherman gave this country its first antitrust law, the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890, which we still use today. As Sherman famously said, “If we would not submit to an emperor, we should not submit to an autocrat of trade with power to prevent competition and to fix the price of any commodity.”

President Donald Trump pledged in his inaugural address to usher in America’s “golden age” with policies that “will, very simply, put America first.” He followed up by nominating antitrust stalwart Gail Slater to head Department of Justice’s antitrust division and appointing the similarly minded Andrew Ferguson to chair the Federal Trade Commission.

But other moves have led to controversy over the administration’s antitrust stance. Trump gave front-row seats to Big Tech CEOs at his inauguration, took a deregulatory posture on artificial intelligence a few days later, fired several officials in the DOJ’s antitrust division in July, and recently settled with Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), all of which sent mixed signals on his administration’s antitrust agenda.

So it’s fair to ask: Is this administration rebalancing the scales of competition, or is this just limousine populism?

Why the Pentagon Wants Ligado’s Scalp

In 2020, Trump’s Federal Communications Commission (our landlord) approved Ligado’s (our prospective tenant) request to modify its licenses to provide modest 5G and IoT services. The vote at the FCC was unanimous and bipartisan. However, soon after the vote, the DOD attempted to circumvent the FCC’s process by tying the entire proceeding up in regulatory purgatory.

They even leveraged its private contractors, like billion-dollar contractor Iridium, to employ a smear campaign against the FCC and Ligado to kill this bipartisan deal at the FCC. Both constituencies inanely asserted that granting Ligado this relief would make GPS for the military unusable due to Ligado’s interference. They even had some of their lobbyists absurdly analogize that granting Ligado’s request is tantamount to placing “a frat house next to a library.” When in all actuality the FCC was setting up a book club in the next town over from GPS operations given the power levels it was operating at and the massive 23 MHz guard band—that required Ligado to give up its own spectrum to create, mind you—separating Ligado’s operations and its GPS services.

The Court Did Its Job, Now It’s Time for Congress

Writing in Broadband Breakfast, DPI President Joel Thayer and Roslyn Layton make the case for bipartisan USF reform:

“USF’s contribution base is shrinking, which has increased the contribution rate to fund universal service from 11.5% in 2009 to 36% this year. That’s a problem for everyday Americans as this fee is now almost totally borne by the consumer. If driving up the costs for hardworking citizens wasn’t bad enough, it will be harder for the FCC to reach those on the wrong side of the digital divide as those select services that fund USF dry up.

“Without question, USF’s contribution mechanism needs reform. However, there’s an effective way USF can avoid the looming financial cliff—augment the contribution base to include the largest users of broadband: Big Tech!”

Challenges and Opportunities for Universal Service Reform

Now is the time for the United States to take “decisive action” to reform the Universal Service Fund. So writes former FCC General Counsel Tom Johnson Jr. in a new white paper for the Digital Progress Institute. As he puts it, the current system:

“Amounts to a regressive payment that increases each quarter to keep pace with the FCC’s universal service funding needs. Meanwhile, the principal beneficiaries of modern broadband networks—technology companies that rely on high-speed connectivity to transmit massive amounts of data to enable cloud computing, streaming, artificial intelligence, and other applications—freeride on these consumer-funded universal service subsidies.”

The much-watched Consumer Research litigation—winding its way up to the Supreme Court—put a pause on reform efforts these last few years, but with that case ending in a decisive victory for the authority of Congress and the Commission to structure the Fund, the pump is primed for reform:

“There is broad, bipartisan support at Congress for exploring universal service reform, and the time is ripe to do so, as the current contribution model is unsustainable. But in the absence of new legislation, the FCC should use its existing authority to broaden the contribution base. Contrary to conventional wisdom, the FCC has sufficient authority under current law to require contributions from technology companies, at least in part. Specifically, Congress . . . provided the FCC with discretionary or permissive authority to assess contributions from any ‘provider of telecommunications’ . . . . Technology companies provide telecommunications, for example, when they use fiber or other network capabilities to transmit data between server farms to enhance the user experience on their websites. The FCC could use these transmission components as a jurisdictional hook to assess revenue that technology companies obtain through cloud computing services, streaming subscriptions, digital advertising, or other sources. The FCC should conduct a rulemaking to obtain public input on the legal and policy decisions involved in determining how best to expand the contribution base—which in turn could spur Congress to build on the agency’s efforts.”

Efficiently Funding the Universal Service Fund

The Federal Communications Commission’s Universal Service Fund funding model is “unsustainable.” So argues economist Jim Prieger in a white paper for DPI examining eight different models for funding the Fund. Relying on the optimal taxation literature, he explains:

The status quo is horrendously inefficient, with consumers bearing an excess burden of $2.1 billion, or about one-quarter the size of the $8.3 billion in revenue raised. This is a staggering amount of lost consumer benefits.

The most promising options involve taxing various digital services, specifically a digital advertising tax, a Digital Services Tax (on digital advertising, cloud computing, streaming, and platform agency revenues), a Digital Natives Tax (on digital advertising, cloud computing, and Internet service revenues), and a Digital Ecosystem Tax (on digital advertising, cloud computing, streaming, platform agency, Internet service, and telecommunications revenues). Notably, all four options score highly on tax equity.

If the goal is to spread the tax burden across more firms, the Digital Services Tax, Digital Natives Tax, and Digital Ecosystem Tax all excel. A Digital Services Tax would result in a 1% contribution rate, a $5.4 billion direct consumer tax burden, and a $20.2 million excess burden. A Digital Natives Tax would result in a 0.9% contribution rate, a $5.9 billion direct consumer tax burden, and a $15.4 million excess burden. A Digital Ecosystem Tax would result in a 0.8% contribution rate, a $6.1 billion direct consumer tax burden, and a $15.6 million excess burden.

In short, reform is not just desirable but necessary given the inefficiencies of the current funding model. Well-designed reform can better align universal service funding with the evolving digital economy while reducing economic distortions.

Thayer Testifies on Protecting American’s Privacy from Big Tech

Big Tech often claims that they protect Americans’ privacy and attempt to use privacy as a cudgel to block any regulation of their business practices. DPI President Joel Thayer laid bare the lie in his testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee on July 30, 2025, in a hearing on “Protecting the Virtual You: Safeguarding Americans’ Online Data.” To wit:

Although our right to privacy from our government is well established, that is unfortunately not the case with respect to companies. With the allure of free services, we provide details about our most intimate selves to trillion-dollar tech companies who, in turn, make an enormous profit off the data they collect.

They know everything about us. What we like to eat. When we sleep. Where we live. Where we are. Our beliefs. Our fears. Curiously, they claim our age confounds them, but let’s set that aside.

Worse, a recent Pew Study shows that 73% of Americans feel they have limited to no control over how companies use their personal information.5 And the reality is they don’t. We sign privacy policies that are filled with so much legal jargon that it may as well be unintelligible to the average person and—presto!—our data is now their data.

The problem is not just that they sell our data to third-party advertisers but also to those who use our data to create fake images, curate biased newsfeeds, conduct elaborate scams, and even engage in espionage. In short, we are not in control, and Americans are right to be concerned.

Supreme Court Won’t Let Big Tech Hide Behind the First Amendment Anymore

DPI President Joel Thayer joins Zephyr Teachout to explain how the Supreme Court is chipping away at Big Tech’s overreading of the First Amendment:

“While we write from opposite ends of the political spectrum—one of us is a progressive democrat, the other a staunch conservative—we both agree that corporations were never intended to have as much authority vis-à-vis the First Amendment as they enjoy today. Let’s be frank: First Amendment jurisprudence has been a hot mess, especially when applied to Big Tech platforms, and tech companies have taken full advantage of it.

“That is, until the Supreme Court‘s decision earlier this year in TikTok v. Garland.”