The White House has drafted an executive order for President Donald Trump's signature that would instruct federal antitrust and law enforcement agencies to open investigations into the business practices of Alphabet Inc.'s Google, Facebook Inc. and other social media companies.
The order is in its preliminary stages and has not yet been run past other government agencies, according to a White House official. Bloomberg News obtained a draft of the order.
The document instructs U.S. antitrust authorities to "thoroughly investigate whether any online platform has acted in violation of the antitrust laws." It instructs other government agencies to recommend, within a month after it is signed, actions that could potentially "protect competition among online platforms and address online platform bias."