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Poll: More Americans Fear Big Government Than Big Tech

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June 17, 2019

A new Fox News poll shows that Americans are more concerned about big government than powerful technology companies.

While debates over big tech and socialism dominate headlines leading into the 2020 election, when asked what they believe to be "a greater potential threat to the country's future," 58 percent of the 1,001 registered voters polled said big government, with 35 percent saying big technology companies, with 7 percent saying they don't know. The poll has a margin of sampling error of ± 3 percentage points.

Politicians from both parties have recently raised concerns with big tech companies like Amazon, Google, and Facebook. Progressive Democrats and populist Republicans alike have criticized such companies for what they see as excessive influence over the economy and politics.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.) has proposed breaking up certain tech companies. "Today’s big tech companies have too much power — too much power over our economy, our society, and our democracy," she wrote in a March op-ed in Medium. "They’ve bulldozed competition, used our private information for profit, and tilted the playing field against everyone else. And in the process, they have hurt small businesses and stifled innovation."

Sen. Josh Hawley (R., Mo.) offers different critiques of big tech, focusing on its influence over children and families.

"When it comes to social media companies, they make sure that they're getting the maximum attention of kids—and adults, too—getting them to spend as much time as possible on their platforms, so that they can extract as much personal information as possible, monetize that, and of course have a wide audience for their ads," Hawley told the Washington Free Beacon. "This is the model that they've developed and we need to do better."

Additionally, debates over socialism have become increasingly mainstream, with politicians on Capitol Hill such as Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez identifying as "democratic socialists." A separate Fox News poll has Sanders polling nine points above President Donald J. Trump for the 2020 presidential election.