Is the era of free reign over for Silicon Valley over? Well, maybe.

The European Union levied a fine against Apple this week for "thwarting competition among music streaming rivals", notes the New York Times. The $2 billion fine is another sign, increasingly among many, that the tech behemoths are coming under more regulation and scrutiny.

In 2022, the European Union passed both the landmark Digital Markets Act (DMA), which regulates the large tech companies, and the Digital Services Act, which helps limit data collection on minors. “This represents a sea change in how we regulate the tech sector,” Greg Taylor of Oxford University told the Times. “Although the E.U. is the first out of the gate, other jurisdictions around the world are trying to do similar things.”

Meanwhile, in the United States, Amazon, Meta, and Alphabet all currently face or hace recently faced anti-trust lawsuits by the DOJ. Proposed legislation by a bipartisan group of Senators has sought to prevent further anticompetitive behavior by tech companies. The American Online Innovation and Choice Act ultimately never passed, but has woken Silicon Valley up to the reality that Congress has an appetite for regulation.

Advocating for a metered approach, the Harvard Business Review writes of such regulation and antitrust lawsuits that they "may inadvertently tip the scales in favor of second- and third-place players who focus more on efficiency than innovation. …So before regulators intervene, they should think carefully about what exactly the desired outcome of antitrust action is and behave accordingly. On its own, a hobbled giant doesn’t create a thriving marketplace."

The Supreme Court

What's left to see is how the SCOTUS will deal with Silicon Valley. Late last month, the high court heard arguments for two cases addressing the issue of free speech on social media sites.

At the core of both Florida and Texas's laws prohibiting the restriction of speech by users on Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, X, and other large sites, is whether these platforms are similar to newspapers which exercise editorial control, or phone lines which operate as a common carrier.

According to the New York Times, Judge Andrew Oldham of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, differentiated the two laws by writing that "'To generalize just a bit,' …the Florida law 'prohibits all censorship of some speakers,' while the one from Texas 'prohibits some censorship of all speakers' when based on the views they express."

“I wonder, since we’re talking about the First Amendment, whether our first concern should be with the state regulating what, you know, we have called the modern public square,” Chief Justice Roberts asked during the arguments.

THE VERDICT:

Two decades into the reign of Silicon Valley as the main growth engine of America's economy, it seems reasonable and rational that legislators are waking up to the need for regulation. If Silicon Valley is set on fighting it, they should instead embrace it as a sign of their industry’s maturation.