US DOJ launching another antitrust probe into big tech

[coasterghost]

So, we are here again. The DOJ has announced that they are doing yet another antitrust probe over big tech. According to the Wall Street Journal “The review is geared toward examining the practices of online platforms that dominate internet search, social media and retail services, the officials said.” I whole heartily agree that we need to look into these companies over their practices such as Facebook whom is in this posters opinion, the biggest problem. However as per the DoJ, this will go into online market places.

 

As a shock, CNBC (citing WSJ paywall) is stating that the companies involved are Facebook, Amazon, Google and Apple. I wonder if it'll expand To outside companies and I wonder of Epic Games will be involved. 

 

The DoJs stated goal into this probe: The goal of the Department’s review is to assess the competitive conditions in the online marketplace in an objective and fair-minded manner and to ensure Americans have access to free markets in which companies compete on the merits to provide services that users want.  If violations of law are identified, the Department will proceed appropriately to seek redress.

 

I have to laugh at “ensure Americans have access to free markets in which companies compete on the merits to provide services that users want.” Now only if ISPs were forced to I don’t know, COMPETE! So this is really rich coming from the DoJ.

 

 

 

DoJ Press Release: https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-reviewing-practices-market-leading-online-platforms

WSJ (Paywall): https://www.wsj.com/articles/justice-department-to-open-broad-new-antitrust-review-of-big-tech-companies-11563914235?mod=hp_lead_pos1

CNBC: https://www.cnbc.com/2019/07/23/doj-reportedly-to-open-broad-antitrust-review-of-big-tech-tech-stocks-dip.html

 

To the mods, my apologies.

[Orangeator]

7 hours ago, coasterghost said:

I have to laugh at “ensure Americans have access to free markets in which companies compete on the merits to provide services that users want.” Now only if ISPs were forced to I don’t know, COMPETE! So this is really rich coming from the DoJ.

On this note, that isn't so much a "lack of competition", but more of a natural oligopoly... Due to the large upfront cost of laying fiber and purchasing equipment and passing inspections... Etc. ISP's are incredibly expensive to start up. Restricting the amount of players in the game. Next, you have a limit of how many different ISP's can reasonably serve an area. You can only run so many fiber lines to an area, be that a house, neighborhood, or city, before it becomes saturated. There isn't too much the government can do about this reality, other then putting in price ceilings. Trust me, I hate the situation I'm in too with ISP's. I would love Google fiber. I pay more for 100 down then people who have gigabit internet... 

[Trik'Stari]

Well, I can tell you right now DOJ; Facebook, Google, and Twitter are acting outside the law in regards to maintaining their neutrality as platforms and not publishers.

[TVwazhere]

16 hours ago, coasterghost said:

To outside companies and I wonder of Epic Games will be involved. 

I seriously doubt it. These target seems to be on companies that hold influence on social media, web searches and longstanding issues with 3rd party repairs. Epic Games is only accused of spying on computer hardware and guilty of making exclusive deals wit game developers. They're guppies compared to the big fish.

[DrMacintosh]

6 hours ago, Trik'Stari said:

Well, I can tell you right now DOJ; Facebook, Google, and Twitter are acting outside the law in regards to maintaining their neutrality as platforms and not publishers.

In what ways?

[Commodus]

6 hours ago, Trik'Stari said:

Well, I can tell you right now DOJ; Facebook, Google, and Twitter are acting outside the law in regards to maintaining their neutrality as platforms and not publishers.

That's not the subject of this investigation, and that's also not true.

 

American free speech rights only prevent the government from dictating your ability to say something in the first place.  They do not let the government force private companies to carry others' speech unless blocking that speech violates some other kind of law, such as an anti-discrimination law.  It doesn't matter whether that private company is a publisher or a platform.

 

I don't want to go much further than that lest we get the thread locked, but basically: unless the government somehow reclassifies Facebook, Google and Twitter as public spaces, they're not acting "outside the law."

[Drak3]

Just now, Commodus said:

American free speech rights only prevent the government from dictating your ability to say something in the first place. 

The US government also has sets of laws that differentiates platforms and publishers, and what they're responcible for. Google and co claim to be platforms, but they very observably act as publishers.

 

And yes, Google acts and acknowleges that they act as a publisher and are actively censoring users. Project Veritas verified this. Google themselves verified this.

[Commodus]

35 minutes ago, Drak3 said:

The US government also has sets of laws that differentiates platforms and publishers, and what they're responcible for. Google and co claim to be platforms, but they very observably act as publishers.

 

And yes, Google acts and acknowleges that they act as a publisher and are actively censoring users. Project Veritas verified this. Google themselves verified this.

Not going to get further into this other than to remind you that Project Vertias has been repeatedly caught lying and can't be trusted.

[Drak3]

1 minute ago, Commodus said:

Project Vertias has been repeatedly caught lying 

According to who? You?

 

Vox?

CNN?

Vice?

[spartaman64]

i think theres a strong case for amazon doing anticompetitive stuff i heard a story where they tried to buy an online store that sells baby products or something and they refused to amazon discounted baby products until that store went bankrupt and then raised prices back up. 

[Commodus]

6 minutes ago, Drak3 said:

According to who? You?

 

Vox?

CNN?

Vice?

Not going to get into this any further, as I said, although you might want to look at James O'Keefe's legal history and particularly the deceptions he tried around ACORN and the Washington Post.

[Chett_Manly]

Google has a monopoly in search, in advertising, and uses those anti-competitively to boost other products to near monopolies, as it has done with YouTube, which they then used to cement their Browser monopoly by creating a subpar experience in YouTube for non Google browsers.

 

Google is nothing but anti-competitive practices.

 

I hope it is broken up.

 

 

-Typed on Edge Preview built on Chromium so Microsoft can have a browser Google cannot sabotage.

[Drak3]

2 minutes ago, Commodus said:

Not going to get into this any further, as I said, although you might want to look at James O'Keefe's legal history and particularly the deceptions he tried around ACORN and the Washington Post.

So, you have no credible source to counter Project Veritas.

[Commodus]

Just now, Drak3 said:

So, you have no credible source to counter Project Veritas.

I'm not going into this further.  I just linked evidence showing the group can't be trusted.  If you continue on this subject, I will report you for purposefully derailing the thread.

 

To get back to the subject... the fact is that unless Google et. al. are reclassified as public spaces, the DOJ antitrust review won't and can't address free speech.  It'll tackle competition.

[Drak3]

6 minutes ago, Commodus said:

the fact is that unless Google et. al. are reclassified as public spaces, the DOJ antitrust review won't and can't address free speech.

They're classified as platforms. In the US, that means that there is no political moderation (that includes "fake" news). Google doesn't fit that.

[Trik'Stari]

9 hours ago, Commodus said:

That's not the subject of this investigation, and that's also not true.

 

American free speech rights only prevent the government from dictating your ability to say something in the first place.  They do not let the government force private companies to carry others' speech unless blocking that speech violates some other kind of law, such as an anti-discrimination law.  It doesn't matter whether that private company is a publisher or a platform.

 

I don't want to go much further than that lest we get the thread locked, but basically: unless the government somehow reclassifies Facebook, Google and Twitter as public spaces, they're not acting "outside the law."

To be fair, there are laws distinguishing the behavior of a publisher and a platform. IIRC part of the DMCA allows immunity from slander lawsuits for companies like Facebook and Twitter, so long as they have like a neutral platform and not taking sides like a publisher.

 

And they very clearly and very obviously are behaving more like a publisher these days. As is youtube. Microsoft and Apple, not so much.

 

Although one could argue that Apple is sort of a publisher on its own platform, maybe.

 

And this is being talked about in political circles. Last I heard a bill was introduced or being drafted to remove their immunity to slander and libel litigation, unless they submit to auditing every 2 years to determine that they are behaving in a neutral manner.

 

That being said, I've made my stance on this very clear. These "platforms" absolutely should be reclassified as privately owned public spaces.

[Drak3]

10 minutes ago, Trik'Stari said:

To be fair, there are laws distinguishing the behavior of a publisher and a platform. IIRC part of the DMCA allows immunity from slander lawsuits for companies like Facebook and Twitter, so long as they have like a neutral platform and not taking sides like a publisher.

 

And they very clearly and very obviously are behaving more like a publisher these days. As is youtube.

IIRC, this round of anti trust is explicitly due to them acting as publishers.