"Facebook and Big Tech are facing a Big Tobacco moment,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat from Connecticut, said this past week when a whistleblower testified about how the social media company’s products harmed teenagers.
"I think that that’s an appropriate analogy,” Sen. Cynthia Lummis, a Wyoming Republican, added later.
The whistleblower’s testimony, and the thousands of internal documents she shared with lawmakers, generated unusual bipartisan bonhomie in a divided Washington. Senators said it was time for Congress to coalesce around new regulations to rein in the company and perhaps the technology industry as a whole.