The past four years have brought a lot of scrutiny for big tech companies, and 2020 was seen by many as a year when regulators would capitalize on both international and domestic momentum to change the way big tech is governed.

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But with the coronavirus pandemic reshaping priorities and Joe Biden nabbing the Democratic presidential nomination, Bloomberg points out that it could be a gentler-than-expected year for Silicon Valley. As a reminder, prominent Democratic presidential candidates Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders both called for overhauling big tech, while Biden has been far less aggressive.

A lot of regulatory pressure is relieved by big tech's prominent critics dropping out of the race, but tech platforms' efforts to aid with coronavirus relief may go even further to help them out. In recent weeks, tech and social media companies have connected self-distancing users with new features, improved their content moderation around coronavirus-related misinformation, assisted in virus tracking, fundraised for health workers, donated and loaned cash to small businesses and news publishers, and even given away millions of N95 masks.

Ironically, many of these forms of aid further expose the size and wealth of the tech giants, but in a positive way, in contrast with the negative attention their size has brought on amid antitrust investigations. In particular, the companies' increasingly scrutinized data monopolies are now being wielded for the benefit of society: Both Facebook and Google are working to utilize anonimized personal data, like location history, to help trace the spread of coronavirus and map out hotspots and then provide that information to researchers, health workers, universities, and nonprofits.

For all of its efforts to aid with coronavirus relief, big tech is still receiving plenty of antitrust criticism — but that pressure may stay on the back burner for the near future. I'd be remiss to say that no voices are calling out the behemoths over concerns of their use of personal data for these efforts — for instance, The Verge tech reporter Casey Newton voiced concern over the lack of privacy backlash in response to big tech's data-mapping efforts.

But compared with early 2020, when the CCPA launched in the US and governments worldwide were honing in on examinations of data collection practices across big tech, the pushback is few and far between. The proceedings that are already in place — like the DOJ, FTC, and state attorneys general investigations — will continue, but without the same pressure from the public and nationally prominent politicians, there's likely less of an impetus to pursue tech companies as aggressively.

Unless some kind of huge discovery comes to light, I don't see heavy scrutiny coming back on them until at least Q4 2020, if not mid-2021. It's worth noting that we do still have an entire election cycle to go through, and if the platforms fail to prevent the spread of election-related misinformation and manipulation — as they did in 2016 — it's possible that much of this goodwill comes undone.

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