As POTUS, Biden will overturn Trump's immigration EOs, support net neutrality, and may not prioritize Section 230 reform, but his antitrust approach is unclear
and Google in particular Financial Times : Biden's team is as antipathetic towards Zuckerberg and other tech titans as other Democrats, but some tech execs expect less drama after four years of Trump Tom Parker / Reclaim The Net : Report: Joe Biden wants ex-Google CEO Eric Schmidt to lead a tech industry task force in the White House Rebecca Klar / The Hill : Biden spokesman blasts Facebook for allowing misinformation after election Joshua Brustein / Bloomberg : Joe Biden Gives Big Tech a Different Kind of Washington Problem Cliff Taylor / The Irish Times : Investors buy shares first and ask questions later on vaccine news Jack Gramenz / news.com.au : NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine to step down when Joe Biden takes over from Donald Trump Tweets: Rasmus Kleis Nielsen / @rasmus_kleis : Biden has hired “Jessica Hertz, former associate general counsel at Facebook, and Cynthia Hogan, former Apple vice-president for government affairs, to his transition team. Eric Schmidt... is being talked about to lead a new technology industry task force” https://giftarticle.ft.com/... Josh Hawley / @hawleymo : Biden already selling out to the tech robber barons. Amazing https://twitter.com/... Tony Romm / @tonyromm : @ceciliakang @TechmemeChatter @dmccabe @jacknicas if you wanna be with me baby, there's a price to pay i'm a genie in a bottle you gotta rub me the right way —joe biden to tech, est. 2021 @reuters : Twitter search links Trump to ‘loser’: Twitter said the results were automatically generated based on how people on the app were using the terms in their tweets at the time https://www.reuters.com/... https://twitter.com/... @shahidforchange : Why is Biden stacking his transition team with executives from big tech? And why do corporate Democrats think this is OK? At stake are issues including 📌privacy & dissent 📌filter bubbles, misinformation, and content moderation 📌antitrust standards 📌your rights online https://twitter.com/... Ryan Cooper / @ryanlcooper : Facebook turned itself into an abjectly pro-Trump website that deliberately throttled traffic to lefty and liberal publications, and yet https://twitter.com/... Lachlan Markay / @lachlan : This just hours after FT reports that Schmidt is being considered to lead a new Biden WH tech task force https://www.ft.com/... https://twitter.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
Back in August, Democrats predicted Biden's tech policy would start mild — nothing too aggressive initially, just a less cozy relationship than the Obama era. The transition picture now firms that up: Biden will overturn Trump's immigration executive orders, support net neutrality, and — despite the campaign's May position that he still wanted to repeal Section 230, with more moderation rather than less — is not expected to prioritize the statute's reform early on.
The open question is antitrust. The Financial Times reports Biden's team is as antipathetic toward Zuckerberg and other tech titans as other Democrats, though some executives expect less drama after four years of Trump, and there is a report that ex-Google CEO Eric Schmidt could lead a White House tech industry task force. Meanwhile a Biden spokesman has already blasted Facebook for allowing post-election misinformation — pressure without Trump's executive-order lever.
First-order effects
- Facebook and Twitter lose the Section 230 threat that came from the White House itself — but the spokesman's public attack on Facebook shows misinformation pressure continuing through rhetoric rather than Trump's FCC-referencing order.
- Google and Facebook's antitrust exposure stays unresolved: no declared White House doctrine means existing scrutiny proceeds without a coordinating presidential stance, leaving the platforms unable to price in a settlement path.
Second-order effects
- Trump's executive order targeting social media platforms loses its champion, orphaning the FCC review it ordered — a move Biden's later revocation of that Section 230 order would formalize, shifting the statute's fate to Congress and the courts.
- Broadband providers face a restored net neutrality posture at the FCC, reversing the commission's Trump-era direction and reopening a rulemaking fight the industry had considered settled.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, platform governance moves from unilateral executive orders to institutional process — legislation, agency review, and a task-force structure — which the later revocation of Trump's Section 230 order confirms as the actual trajectory.
- The hires reported here (Jessica Hertz and Cynthia Hogan on the transition, a possible Schmidt-led task force) point to the tech-veteran-filled administration that OneZero would later read as tougher on tech than predecessors — less drama, more durable pressure.
The trend: Washington's grip on Big Tech is shifting from Trump's unilateral executive orders toward institutional, Democrat-led pressure on misinformation and antitrust, with Section 230 left to Congress rather than the White House.