Matt Stoller, the research director at the American Economic Liberties Project, on Thursday said that the House panel’s grilling of tech CEOs was the most important hearing on corporate power since the 1930s.
Stoller told Hill.TV that he felt the lawmakers came to the Wednesday hearing “well-prepared” and having “really done their research about how these guys misbehaved.”
“There were four major tech CEOs, representing $5 trillion of market capitalization, who never have to answer questions to anyone, and they had to sit there for five hours and answer questions,” he said.
Stoller addressed Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos’s response to Rep. Pramila Jayapal’s (D-Wash.) questioning on nonpublic third-party seller data. The CEO testified that Amazon had a policy against using that data, but he added “I can’t guarantee you that that policy has never been violated.”
“That’s amazing because what it indicates is that no one’s really in charge of Amazon,” he said. “And you see this kind of across the board.”
“These guys kind of seem like they’re titans of industry, but in fact all they really pay attention to is making sure that the toll booth that they control is in working order, but the rest of it they don’t care,” he added.
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