Global policymakers and consumers are weary of Big Tech monopolies. While excessive consolidation of power leads to privacy violations, price gouging, and stifling innovation, it poses a unique threat to free speech.
Trump administration antitrust enforcers understood that threat. As Assistant Attorney General Gail Slater observed, when a handful of companies control the flow of information, “someone can be disappeared from the internet quite easily.”
Digital free speech shouldn’t depend on the shifting preferences of Apple executives or Google policy teams.
Conservatives increasingly see Big Tech’s ability to distort and manipulate public discourse as a downstream effect of its market dominance. In the case of the mobile internet, it takes only two companies — Apple and Google — to control the smartphone experience of nearly every American.
Congress is beginning to respond. Two recently introduced bills would take on Apple and Google’s app store choke points directly. The Open App Markets Act, co-sponsored by Sens. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), and the App Store Freedom Act, sponsored by Rep. Kat Cammack (R-Fla.), aim to empower users by giving them the option to download apps from sources outside of Apple and Google’s proprietary platforms, including alternative marketplaces.
Why do these technical details matter for speech? Because Apple and Google’s gatekeeper power has already been abused to silence dissent.
In 2021, Parler — a social media app popular on the right — was removed from Apple and Google’s app stores for allegedly having “inadequate” content moderation policies. The timing followed reports that the platform was used to coordinate the January 6 Capitol riot. Virtually overnight, Parler went from one of the fastest growing apps in the world to a ghost town. Internet consumers move quickly, and the app’s months in Big Tech’s doghouse became a death sentence. Parler never recovered.
Parler wasn’t an isolated case. Years earlier, Google banned Gab, another free speech-oriented platform, while Apple never allowed it to launch in the first place. Google also initially refused to approve President Trump’s Truth Social due to concerns over its moderation policies. And abroad, Apple has bowed to authoritarian regimes — removing apps used by dissidents in China and Russia at the request of those governments.
The problem runs deeper than censorship. Apple and Google have used their dominance to dictate the design and speech choices of developers. App makers are often forbidden from communicating key information to users — such as the availability of cheaper subscription pricing outside of Apple and Google’s walled gardens.
The scope of their power is staggering. Roughly 91% of Americans own a smartphone. More than 99% of those devices run on Apple’s iOS or Google’s Android operating systems. And 88% of the time spent on those phones is inside apps — not on web browsers.
Without real guardrails, that bottleneck becomes a single point of failure. It’s a choke point ready to be exploited by governments, activist groups, or corporations that want to control speech.
Some openly defend the current system precisely because it allows Apple and Google to keep disfavored apps off the market. Even before Elon Musk acquired Twitter (now X), Apple and Google pressured the company to increase moderation. After Musk’s takeover, activist organizations lobbied Apple and Google to ban X altogether if Musk didn’t reinstate stricter content rules.
An open app ecosystem benefits everyone. Conservatives celebrating Big Tech’s apparent political shifts should remember how easily those loyalties change. Liberals worried about “tech bro” influence should support guardrails that limit partisan manipulation — regardless of who holds power.
Digital free speech shouldn’t depend on the shifting preferences of Apple executives or Google policy teams. Congress must act to restore balance and ensure pluralism. The Open App Markets Act and the App Store Freedom Act offer real, durable solutions. They deserve bipartisan support.
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