A bipartisan group of senators has reintroduced the American Innovation and Choice Online Act, the marquee attempt to write rules for how the largest internet platforms may treat the businesses that depend on them. The bill would prohibit covered platforms from self-preferencing their own products, misusing the data of business users who sell through them, and blocking efforts at data portability. It is one of the most consequential internet-governance fights in Washington, and its return signals that the pressure to regulate gatekeeper platforms did not disappear when earlier versions stalled.
- AICOA targets self-preferencing: a dominant platform ranking or favoring its own products over rivals that sell on the same surface.
- It would bar platforms from misusing business-user data to compete against the very sellers who generate it.
- It backs data portability, making it harder for a platform to lock users and their data in.
- It applies only to covered platforms, the handful large enough to act as gatekeepers, not the whole internet.
What is self-preferencing, in plain terms?
It is the conflict of interest that arises when the company running a marketplace also competes inside it. A platform that hosts thousands of sellers, and also sells its own competing products, controls the ranking, the search box, and the default placement that decide who gets seen. Left unchecked, it can quietly put its own products first, demote rivals, or use the sales data those rivals generate to clone their best items. AICOA's core move is to make that specific behavior illegal for the largest gatekeepers, on the theory that a referee should not also be a player. The bill does not break anyone up; it sets conduct rules.
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Why reintroduce it now?
Because the underlying dynamic has only intensified, and because bipartisan appetite for reining in Big Tech has proven durable across the political divide. The sponsors span both parties, which is the entire point: antitrust reform aimed at dominant platforms is one of the rare issues where left and right find overlapping motives, one worried about competition and consumer harm, the other about the power of large platforms over speech and small business. Reintroduction resets the legislative clock and forces the debate back into committee, where the last versions stalled under heavy lobbying. The signal matters even if passage is uncertain: gatekeeper conduct is still on Washington's agenda.
| Practice | Under AICOA | Today |
|---|---|---|
| Rank own products first | Prohibited for gatekeepers | Largely allowed |
| Use seller data to compete | Prohibited | Common |
| Block data portability | Prohibited | Frequent lock-in |
| Scope | Covered platforms only | N/A |
| Remedy | Conduct rules, enforcement | Case-by-case antitrust suits |
How does this compare to Europe?
The EU already lives under a version of this idea. Its Digital Markets Act designates certain large platforms as gatekeepers and imposes conduct rules, including limits on self-preferencing and requirements around data portability and interoperability. AICOA is narrower and would arrive later, but it rhymes with the DMA's logic: rather than litigate each abuse for years under general antitrust law, define a class of dominant platforms and write bright-line rules for how they must behave. The comparison also shows the stakes, because platforms have already had to change real product behavior in Europe, and a US law would extend similar obligations to their home market.
What are the objections?
The platforms argue that self-preferencing is often just good product design, that showing your own service can be what users want, and that broad conduct rules risk degrading the experience or creating security headaches when interoperability is forced. Critics also warn about vague definitions of what counts as a covered platform and what counts as favoring. Supporters counter that the current model, suing after the harm is done, is too slow for markets that tip in months. The genuine tension is between preserving integrated products users like and preventing gatekeepers from using that integration to smother competition.
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- Committee movement. Whether the bill clears committee this time, where prior versions died, is the first real test.
- Midterm timing. Election-year politics and a packed calendar could stall it regardless of support. Watch the schedule.
- Lobbying spend. Platform lobbying against AICOA has been enormous. Its intensity is a proxy for how seriously the bill is taken.
- DMA precedent. How Europe's gatekeeper rules play out in practice will be cited by both sides in the US debate.
Our take
AICOA is the most serious attempt to translate a genuine, well-understood problem into workable law, and its return is more meaningful than its odds. Self-preferencing on gatekeeper platforms is not a hypothetical harm; it is the structural reason a marketplace operator that also competes on its own surface faces a conflict of interest every single day. The hard part is drawing the line without banning the integrated products people actually want, and that is where the drafting will be fought line by line. Europe has already shown that conduct rules can change platform behavior without dismantling anyone. Whether the US follows depends less on the merits, which are well aired, than on whether a crowded election-year Congress can move a bill the largest lobbies in Washington are paid to stop. Watch the committee vote.
- OfficialCongress.gov track the bill text and status
- ReferenceAmerican Innovation and Choice Online Act background and prior versions
- ReferenceEU Digital Markets Act the gatekeeper-rules precedent
Original analysis by GenZTech. Figures current as of July 2026. Source: Congress.gov.