Justice Department To Open Broad, New Antitrust Review of Big Tech Companies (cnbc.com) 108
schwit1 shares a report from The Wall Street Journal: The Justice Department is opening a broad antitrust review into whether dominant technology firms are unlawfully stifling competition (Warning: source paywalled; alternative source), according to department officials, adding a new Washington threat for companies such as Facebook, Google, Amazon and Apple. The review is geared toward examining the practices of online platforms that dominate internet search, social media and retail services, the officials said.
The new antitrust inquiry is the strongest signal yet of Attorney General William Barr's deep interest in the tech sector, and it could ratchet up the already considerable regulatory pressures facing the top U.S. tech firms. The review is designed to go above and beyond recent plans for scrutinizing the tech sector that were crafted by the department and the Federal Trade Commission. Justice Department officials said they would use the new antitrust review to seek extensive input and information from industry participants, and eventually from the dominant tech firms themselves. It isn't yet known whether much of the information-gathering will be done on a voluntary basis or if companies eventually could be compelled by the government to turn over materials. "There is no defined end-goal yet for the Big Tech review other than to understand whether there are antitrust problems that need addressing, but a broad range of options are on the table," the report adds. "The department's inquiry could eventually lead to more focused investigations of specific company conduct."
The new antitrust inquiry is the strongest signal yet of Attorney General William Barr's deep interest in the tech sector, and it could ratchet up the already considerable regulatory pressures facing the top U.S. tech firms. The review is designed to go above and beyond recent plans for scrutinizing the tech sector that were crafted by the department and the Federal Trade Commission. Justice Department officials said they would use the new antitrust review to seek extensive input and information from industry participants, and eventually from the dominant tech firms themselves. It isn't yet known whether much of the information-gathering will be done on a voluntary basis or if companies eventually could be compelled by the government to turn over materials. "There is no defined end-goal yet for the Big Tech review other than to understand whether there are antitrust problems that need addressing, but a broad range of options are on the table," the report adds. "The department's inquiry could eventually lead to more focused investigations of specific company conduct."
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Even better: they need serious competition. Take e.g. YouTube. The have a long history of being dicks to their content creators, demonetizing videos or entire channels with either explaining precisely why nor giving a transparent avenue for appeal or corrections. It's a very "we're AT&T, we don't have to" attitude. But that's only a problem becuase they're the only game in town.
Anti-trust seems like the roght angle to approach this from. Is Google leveraging it's dominance of search to keep competi
Re: Good! (Score:2)
Isn't it curious how whenever there a story about Google's anti-competitive business practices, immediately the comments get crapflooded with dozens of inane anti-semitic shitposts. It's almost like Alphabet pays its PR shills to post hate messages, in an attempt to discredit Google's critics.
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It's a dog whistle for: Where are your campaign contributions?
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Nicely said. I still maintain that much of this is quid pro quo. The energy sector got their way with the EPA, the telcos with the FCC. Now it's tech's turn to cooperate by sending much lobbying and campaign financing dough to DC. It is, as it's always been.
People hear what they want to hear. Getting Trump out of office only works with a sincere voter registration campaign and follow through in key states. NOTHING ELSE is going to change that.
Re: This could have been a good thing... (Score:2)
"Getting Trump out of office only works with a sincere voter registration campaign and follow through"
Nope. Beating President Trump in the next election requires the Democrat Party to run a candidate whom the voters like. NO ONE wants a corporate stooge like Biden. Doesn't matter how much dirty money the Chinese give you to spend on his campaign, he can't win.
Bernie could win. Most Trump supporters actively prefer Bernie. But the Democrat Party already stole the primary from Bernie once. They'll never allow
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Beak, you gotta wet his beak...
Barr is the *backdoor* man...
Rent Seeking Government Style (Score:2)
Looks like the Uncle Sams all need a little extra cash.
That's okay... the fines are going to be easy for companies to swallow and yet still cheap enough to keep breaking the law and ignoring regulations.
It is better business to just pay the fines! You will make more that way.
Re: Rent Seeking Government Style (Score:2)
The point is to break up anti-competitive and anti-democratic concentration of ownership.
One good solid swing of the trust-busting stick and Alphabet will be broken up into a dozen harmless little companies. Dinky like companies that can't abuse monopoly power to spy on everyone and stifle political speech.
Get ready for it, Google Nazis. The ghost of Thurman Arnold is coming to Mountain View.
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Do you live under a rock ?
Re: Trump Hates Tech (Score:2)
Nah. I bet shilling pays enough to rent a studio apartment.
Just what everybody wants to hear (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
I love the way the wind blows on this site. Anything google or facebook does is utterly disgusting, repugnant, immoral, unethical and degenerate. Unless the government's gonna look into them for any or all of the above. Then they're good, god fearing American Companies that have beaten back the competition only by the sweat of their brow and are examples for us all to look up to!
I get that the current administration sucks a large pile of various animal types of balls, but when they finally decide to do s
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It's almost like there are multiple people who post, each with different political and social views.
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Here is the problem.
Name me one single thing that the current administration has done that has not been for :
1) profit motive
2) self interest
3) placate "the base" (READ: say or do something the base's opposition will find unsavory)
Just one thing.
Re:Just what everybody wants to hear (Score:4, Insightful)
the legal term is 'Fishing Expedition'
https://www.law.cornell.edu/we... [cornell.edu]
"Legal grasping at straws; the use of pretrial investigation discovery or witness questioning in an unfocused attempt to uncover damaging evidence to be used against an adversary."
Nice company you got there (Score:3)
Shame if something happened to it. BTW, we're selling backdoor kits for law enforcement, can we put you down for 100 million ?
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Well played sir
Microsoft? (Score:1)
It makes one but wonder why Microsoft could be out of antitrust considerations.
2020 is an election year (Score:4, Interesting)
And leaving out tech companies like Oracle, Microsoft, SAP, media companies like Disney, WarnerMedia, Sony, telecommunication and financial institutions, ensures cash keeps coming into political campaigns and political pockets.
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It's all about Amazon & Jeff Bezos (Score:3, Insightful)
politics cuts both ways (Score:1)
Re:politics cuts both ways (Score:4, Insightful)
Name one non-asshat non-white supremacist non anti-Semitic nut job that was blocked by Twitter/Google/Facebook.
Half the country are not looney tunes, Hell half aren't even republican, it's about 30% republican, 30% democrat and 40% piss off you silly bastards. The asshats that were blocked represent a small (few percent) fraction of the country. If you identify with them then fine but that doesn't mean the world cleaved into people you agree with and people you don't maps to 50/50. Not all sets are the same size.
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Name one non-asshat non-white supremacist non anti-Semitic nut job that was blocked by Twitter/Google/Facebook.
Half the country are not looney tunes, Hell half aren't even republican, it's about 30% republican, 30% democrat and 40% piss off you silly bastards. The asshats that were blocked represent a small (few percent) fraction of the country. If you identify with them then fine but that doesn't mean the world cleaved into people you agree with and people you don't maps to 50/50. Not all sets are the same size.
I said conservative, not necessarily Republican. In any case a some examples of Youtube (Google) bias would be: https://www.prageru.com/press-... [prageru.com] https://quillette.com/2019/02/... [quillette.com] https://www.forbes.com/sites/r... [forbes.com] The people above would not generally be classified as Nazis, hate speech, racists, xenophobes, or other slurs that get thrown so easily these days. Percentage wise they are small but if a small percent can be written off without a problem then I never want to hear another comment about transgen
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I would suggest there's a fundamental difference between 1% of the population saying 'group X' should not be allowed to exist and 1% of the population saying we'd like to be allowed to exist.
I've never understood why the people being punched and the people doing the punching are viewed as somehow symmetrical.
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Instead of playing your stupid game of "name the asshats" im going to play the "Look at this ignorant response above"
You need to go look up what shadow banning is.
Clearly you have no idea about what's really going on, and chiming in with your ignorant opinion just makes the left look even more stupid.
They are blocking regular users for NOTHING OTHER THAN HAVING A CONSERVATIVE OPINION.
I got blocked yesterday from /r/worldnews because I questioned a definition of socialism by another user. No profanity, no ra
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Yeah they banned Alex Jones for being "conservative" . How is anyone here supposed to take you seriously when you type shit like that out on your keyboard, read it, then still hit submit?
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Evidence please, other than inadvertent technical snafus.
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> Google, Twitter, and Facebook and others have been playing politics by banning conservatives for being ... conservatives
Maybe they shouldn't be racist, violent, threatening assholes then?
> Why should they be surprised that it came back to bite them.
Because the last time I looked, the First Amendment DOESN'T APPLY TO PRIVATE COMPANIES? It's about the GOVERNMENT not stifling speech.
> There should be penalties for disenfranchising roughly half the country.
Yes, there should be a FULL investigation i
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Approving users political free speech as a responsible social media brand?
Social media as the owner, as something that "distributes" and acts as a "publisher" of all users content. Selecting what's is approved and what is sinful?
Just another network of platforms to pass on users content?
A charity? A NGO?
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Try to get a book published
Where's my tin-foil hat (Score:2)
Considering the other Slashdot story with Mr. Barr as the target of discussion ( Backdoors for Crypto ) I can see where any potential negative findings of an Anti-Trust review might get " overlooked " if the tech company in question is willing to co-operate with the USG demands for backdoor crypto. :|
The USG likes to dangle the " government contracts " carrot over Big Techs head as it is already.
( Play along and you get the big contracts as a reward. Refuse, and we give the contracts to your competition in
Re: USA needs Big Tech MUCH more than Big Tech nee (Score:2)
"A. 2020 election is looming nearer and nearer; Political cretins need money to be re-elected; and Big Tech is filled with cash."
Not all politicians can be bribed. And the voters increasingly reject politicians who accept corporate bribes.
"B. America is losing the Global Tech Edge and the Big Tech, whether we like it or not, represents the last beachhead we have on the Global Tech Competition, which means, no way Uncle Sam gonna do something nasty to them."
Correct, the monopolization of the tech industry by
Transparent (Score:2)
Its not hard to put this all together is it folks? /. just posted earlier today that Barr suggesting a backdoor to encryption. Now we see the department Barr heads initiating a sweeping "investigation" into all of the biggest tech leaders...
I'll Bet (Score:1)