At NextGen Competition, we are working to create a fair and competitive technology ecosystem that empowers consumers, workers, and small businesses. Key to this mission is the fight against the market and political power of the largest corporations. We need legislators who understand this challenge and are willing to take on corporate monopolies.

Carleigh Beriont is a Democratic candidate for Congress in New Hampshire's 1st Congressional District. She is a Harvard lecturer, the Vice Chair of the Hampton Select Board, and a mother of two. Beriont has made headlines for running an entirely social media–free campaign, branding herself the "anti-social Democrat." She is also known for her vocal commitment to taking on Big Tech, and her campaign doesn't take corporate PAC money. To learn more about Carleigh, visit her campaign website.

It's great to talk to you, Carleigh. You've called yourself the "anti-social Democrat" and you're running for Congress without any social media presence. What motivated that decision, and what motivated you to run for Congress?

• It was a combination of so many different things! I first got really involved in organizing and politics when we had our first kid. The cost of paying for things like childcare, health insurance, and housing is obscene. I was looking at these bills thinking, "wait, where is all of this money supposed to come from?" But, as hard as it was for us, I knew it was just as hard and harder for other people. About a year before I launched my campaign, my daughter became good friends with the girl who lived next door. She moved in after her mom was hit by a car, ended up in the hospital for months and lost her job, health insurance, and their home. They had nowhere else to turn, so the woman next door opened her home to them for a few months so they could get back on their feet. Long story short, I spent the better part of a year trying to help her and her daughter find a place to live (they ended up moving to a city 45 minutes away) and learning firsthand how incredibly broken our housing system is. I love helping people. It's why I ran for local office. But it's ridiculous when the barriers to helping people are created or made worse by broken state and federal policies and politicians who seem to want to help themselves and nobody else.

• As for social media, I haven't used it since before the pandemic. I quit Facebook after watching a classmate get into a vicious argument with one of my grandmother's childhood friends over Black Lives Matter. I care about these people, and I think that if they had met in person, they would have found that they had a lot in common and maybe found a way to agree or maintain disagreement constructively. But when it comes to social media platforms, the more conflict they create, the more money they make. I'm not anti-technology or anti-communication, but I don't want my leadership or this campaign to be driven by algorithms or outrage. Time and attention are two of our most valuable resources. I support raising the minimum wage (in New Hampshire it's still only $7.25 an hour!) and livable wages, universal healthcare, and policies that make life better for families so that we can have our time back and maybe use it to volunteer, sit around the table and talk, or run for local office. And, we're not going to get out of the mess we're in as a country by investing time and money in platforms that literally incentivize and profit from our division. We need to invest in building real communities and capacity on the ground, in person. I’m really proud to say that I’m not putting a penny of what I’ve raised in the pockets of Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk. Every dollar that people contribute gets spent on organizing in our district, supporting local candidates, and listening to people from across the political spectrum.

As an educator and a parent, you've discussed the impact of social media on young people. New Hampshire, like the rest of the country, is seeing declining test scores and rising youth mental health challenges. How does that connect to your broader critique of Big Tech's business model, which profits from keeping young people glued to screens?

• I'm a mom of two young kids, and my husband is a middle school English teacher. I also taught and worked with college students for the past decade. I have watched as young people–and their parents and grandparents–have become totally dependent on screens and as our society has been shaped by the priorities of these faceless corporations. How often do you realize you can't pay for parking, get into a movie, or do some basic task without your phone? We've gotten to the point where it feels like our lives are beholden and secondary to the priorities and profits of these corporations, and we never had a say in it. I want to see much stronger privacy protections for minors, including limits on data collection, and real investments in our schools and families so that they can thrive. Kids' health should always be prioritized over profits. And I want to enforce anti-monopoly laws against these companies. They have amassed so much political and cultural power by virtue of their sheer size, which helps shield them from accountability for the harm their platforms cause.

• I am eagerly following the Facebook/Instagram and YouTube trials seeking to hold Meta and Google (Snap and ByteDance (aka TikTok) settled before the case went to trial) accountable for harming children. It's refreshing and a little terrifying to see the private conversations of these tech billionaires about the harm their platforms cause made public. We've been getting this drip, drip, drip of news about these platforms enabling human trafficking, driving disordered eating among teens, fomenting genocide, and meanwhile, we're seeing a cultural shift among younger people away from digital platforms and towards a more analog life. I don't think it's a question of whether the influence of these platforms will be greatly diminished. But when, and whether, politicians will wake up to the demands of a younger generation looking for something real and tangible in our political system.

New Hampshire has a strong tradition of small business and local entrepreneurship, from Main Street shops in Portsmouth to startups along the I-93 corridor. Why is it important to take on Big Tech and how does Big Tech's dominance hurt these local business owners? What solutions do you propose to fight for?

• At a kid's birthday party the other week, the dad of my daughter's classmate was telling me how much he pays to ensure his business appears reliably in Google searches. And it was staggering. I love reading a zany, enthusiastic Google review as much as the next person, and I absolutely base decisions about where to get coffee or a haircut in large part on reviews. But we're getting to the point where a handful of companies control the main routes to customers and information AND they set the rules for everyone else. In New Hampshire, as with my kid's friend's dad, for all the benefits of technology (and there are many!), these companies and their platforms too often function like a tollbooth between him and customers. They have the power to raise the toll and they collect and keep it! I think that's what Cory Doctorow means when he writes about enshittification. Once these companies control such a vast amount of the market, they can crank up their profits while diminishing the quality or experience for consumers and the companies that partner with them.

• To make sure that small and local businesses can compete fairly, I'll push for stronger antitrust enforcement AND rules that encourage data portability and interoperability so that business owners aren't trapped on one platform, as well as clearer dispute processes for bogus reviews or leads.

Do you think voters understand how monopoly power impacts their daily lives? What's your go-to way of explaining it?

• I love this question. I think people have a general sense of how this works with cable or internet providers because for so long in our communities, we only had one option. I've found talking about tech or media monopolies really resonates (and unites people) on the campaign trail. When one company controls how you access information and what that information is, that's a monopoly! And when there's no competition, they can take your data, implement or raise fees, and change the rules or user agreements whenever they want. And when they do this with no repercussions, because where else can you really go, that's monopoly power. We need to check that power!

Big Tech companies spend enormous sums lobbying Congress and fighting reform. How would you build coalitions, including across party lines, to get reform passed?

• I think that this is probably the best area for coalition-building in Washington. The divisions over monopoly power and corporate greed aren't partisan ones. Working people recognize that corporations are helping themselves and nobody else, and the politicians who are willing to call that out are usually the ones willing to forego the corporate PAC checks and the fancy, closed-door fundraisers with billionaires and their friends. One way that I'd go about this is by working to neutralize the impact of lobbying, pushing for increased transparency, enacting and enforcing anti-revolving door rules, and looking for where we can build and apply public pressure. You can't take their money, depend upon their platforms for reaching your voters, and then credibly claim to want to take away their power. It just doesn't add up.

• I also really do love finding places to work together, particularly when they are unexpected. My experiences serving in local government and as a union organizer have taught me to believe there are always areas where agreement can be found. The key is to find those places and work together to get something done. That builds the relationships and trust necessary to keep working through substantial division. It's also what we need. Listening to people across my district, I'm talking about Democrats, Republicans, and Independents, I've found there is substantial agreement when it comes to issues like housing and healthcare. And one of the biggest areas of agreement is that corporations, including Big Tech, have way too much power in Washington, and that political corruption and out-of-touch politicians are making life really difficult for ordinary people in this country.

The FTC and DOJ have been central to recent antitrust enforcement against Google, Meta, and others. But those agencies face political pressure and funding challenges. What role should Congress play in protecting and strengthening antitrust enforcement, particularly at a time when the current administration appears to be using enforcement selectively as political leverage?

• When the administration uses antitrust enforcement as a political weapon or a prize, that's corruption! We want antitrust enforcement to be credible and consistent, and the agencies need better funding so they have the capacity to carry it out. What I wouldn't give to have Lina Khan back at the FTC!

• First, Congress needs to increase funding for the FTC and DOJ so they can take on these corporations with their enormous legal budgets. Second, I will be pushing for us to understand harm to include things like weakened privacy protections and degraded quality (to call back to "enshittification") rather than just higher prices.

What other policies will you champion to help working families?

• Where to start!? Capping the cost of childcare and eldercare, Medicare for All, paid leave, fully funding IDEA, and better support for our public school students and teachers (including keeping them safe from gun violence), incentivizing municipalities to rewrite their zoning ordinances for workforce and affordable housing and providing funding for upgrading water and sewer infrastructure so that towns can accommodate new housing with density. Passing Back from the Brink legislation to ensure that the president doesn't have the sole authority to launch a nuclear strike and trigger a global catastrophe. There is so much that we need to do, and can do, to help working families in this country.

Anything else that you would like to share with our readers?

• I think it's so great that you have this newsletter. We need to build power, provide actionable information, and connect with people in meaningful ways. Social media is not a reliable place to build lasting coalitions. Networks like this one are absolutely crucial to building the future we all want to live in. Keep doing it, and please, keep me in the loop! And, if you want to see what a real, effective grassroots campaign looks like, check out my blog: On The Trail. All the information in one convenient place with no ads and no trolls!

Thank you for your time. I look forward to having more conversations like this throughout your campaign and, hopefully, soon on Capitol Hill.