Overview
- Senators Amy Klobuchar and Chuck Grassley reintroduced the American Innovation and Choice Online Act on June 10, reviving a bipartisan effort that stalled in prior Congresses.
- The bill lists specific banned practices such as unfairly promoting a platform’s own products, misusing nonpublic business data to compete, locking users into defaults, blocking data portability, and retaliating against businesses that raise legal concerns.
- AICOA would apply only to very large platforms that meet set thresholds—about $175 billion in average annual gross revenue and reach roughly 34 percent of U.S. households or monthly active users—and it lets the DOJ, the FTC and state attorneys general bring enforcement actions.
- The reintroduction drew quick support from developer and privacy groups including Mozilla, Y Combinator, Proton, Yelp, DuckDuckGo and Replit while Apple issued an official objection saying the bill would undermine privacy, security and child‑safety protections.
- Passage is uncertain and likely to trigger heavy lobbying from tech firms, with lawmakers and analysts noting the bill mirrors elements of the EU’s Digital Markets Act and could force major changes to app stores and platform business models.