John Smith, Chair of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), on 15 March 2026 announced major regulatory changes aimed at Big Tech companies including data privacy reforms.

These reforms followed extensive lobbying by the American Technology Council (ATC), which received $2 million in donations from corporations including Google LLC, Microsoft Corp, and Amazon.com, Inc. The ATC officially supported the new regulations, claiming they would foster transparency and competition, while in reality consolidating control over the market.

In what has become a defining moment for tech policy, the Regulation on Digital Marketplaces (RDM) was passed on 5 October 2026. This legislation aimed to regulate practices such as data collection, algorithm transparency, and platform monopolies. However, the bill’s supporters allegedly misled the public about the scope and enforcement of regulations — enshrining loopholes that favored specific stakeholders.

Senate hearings from April 2026 revealed a clear pattern. Two of the key legislators who pushed for the final version of the RDM, Senators Anna Williams and Jacob Reed, received significant contributions from ATC members. Williams, for example, received $450,000 from various technology-related PACs between January 2025 and March 2026.

Contrarily, the proposed Consumer Privacy Protection Act (CPPA) introduced in January 2026 stalled in Congress, failing to garner support due to intense backlash from pro-Big Tech lobbying groups, including the Technology Freedom Coalition. This coalition spent approximately $3 million over the course of its campaign to undermine the CPPA, which sought to give consumers stronger rights over their personal data.

This is the third time since 2022 that significant regulation aimed at data privacy has failed against the combined force of tech lobbying and political influence. The common thread among these failures has been a lack of oversight and accountability for lobbying expenditures. In a hearing held on 30 July 2026, it was revealed that ATC had ties to multiple think tanks, including the National Tech Policy Institute, which received at least $1.5 million from anonymous funding channels during the same period.

The beneficiaries of this legislative landscape are clear. Technology giants like Google and Amazon, who continue to shape policy to minimize the regulatory burden while maintaining monopolistic practices, are on the winning side. Internally, the lobbying machinery operates efficiently — both in influencing legislation and suppressing opposition.

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