Tag: anti-trust

Republican Candidates Need Not Apply: Media Tracker’s New Study Shows Just How Politically Biased Google’s Search Results Are

M.D. Kittle

Google has long been accused of suppressing conservative speech, but a new study shows the internet search engine giant is playing favorites with Democrats in the 2024 presidential race.

By typing in just one query, “Presidential campaign websites,” Google returned only Democratic Party candidates — some of whom are not even running in 2024, according to Media Research Center, the media watchdog and parent of conservative news site NewsBusters, which is “committed to exposing and combating liberal media bias.”

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Spanberger Blasts House Democratic Leadership for Intentionally Killing Congressional Trading Reform, Vega Says It’s a Stale Pre-Election Routine

Eric Burk

Representative Abigail Spanberger (D-VA-07) criticized Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA-12) and House Democratic leadership for moves that killed bipartisan congressional stock trading reform legislation, but her opponent in the election Yesli Vega said in a press release that the congresswoman “isn’t fooling anyone.”

“This moment marks a failure of House leadership. This moment is yet another example of why I believe that the Democratic Party needs new leaders in the halls of Capitol Hill — as I have long made known,” Spanberger said in a Friday press release.

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New Facebook Lawsuit Alleges Tech Giant Conspired to ‘Crush’ Competition

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Executives of a now-defunct photo app filed an antitrust complaint against Facebook on Thursday alleging the company schemed to end their company.

The complaint, filed by executives of a start-up image app called Phhhoto, alleges that Facebook employed anti-competitive business tactics to throttle the smaller company after it refused a business deal with the tech giant. Specifically, the suit alleges that Mark Zuckerberg personally downloaded the app, approached Phhhoto for a partnership and later pursued a campaign against the start-up after no deal materialized.

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Congress’ Antitrust Legislation Avoids Regulating Many Big Tech Companies

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Last-minute changes to major antitrust legislation working its way through the House appears to exempt several Big Tech companies from being affected by its regulations.

The legislation, which has been months in the making and was crafted to take on Big Tech monopolies, targets a handful of companies while excluding others that also have massive market power, a leading expert told the Daily Caller News Foundation. Existing federal and state antitrust law already prohibits a wide range of anticompetitive business activity across all industries like unlawful mergers and monopolization.

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Facebook Becomes Fifth Tech Company Worth More Than $1 Trillion

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Facebook’s market capitalization, or total dollar value, closed above $1 trillion for the first time ever Monday, making it the fifth U.S. company to reach such size.

Facebook exceeded the $1 trillion mark after a year in which the company experienced massive user and earnings growth, CNBC reported. Apple, Alphabet, Microsoft and Amazon – all fellow Big Tech companies – are the only other U.S. companies that have also surpassed $1 trillion in market capitalization, according to Axios.

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EU Files Antitrust Charges Against Amazon Over Use of Data

The Associated Press

European Union regulators filed antitrust charges Tuesday against Amazon, accusing the e-commerce giant of using its access to data from companies that sell products on its platform to gain an unfair advantage over them.

The charges, filed two years after the bloc’s antitrust enforcer began looking into the company, are the latest effort by European regulators to curb the power of big technology companies. Margrethe Vestager, the EU commissioner in charge of competition issues, has slapped Google with antitrust fines totaling nearly $10 billion and opened twin antitrust investigations this summer into Apple. The EU’s executive Commission also opened a second investigation Tuesday into whether Amazon favors product offers and merchants that use its own logistics and delivery system.

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ANALYSIS: DOJ Investigators Involved in Antitrust Probe Don’t Appear to be Scrutinizing Claims of Bias in Google’s Search

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by Peter Hasson and Chris White   Department of Justice investigators who are conducting an antitrust probe targeting Google do not appear to be scrutinizing claims that the tech giant manipulates its search function, leaks about the probe and a source familiar with it indicate. Google critics argue that Google Search must be a focus of the investigation, pointing to the company’s sheer dominance in the market: Google consistently accounts for roughly 90% of online information searches, and company employees have expressed a willingness to artificially manipulate search results on the platform. Google did not comment on allegations of search bias, or on the pending antitrust investigation. “We continue to engage with the ongoing investigations led by the Department of Justice and Attorney General Paxton, and we don’t have any updates or comments on speculation,” Google spokeswoman Julie McAlister told the Daily Caller News Foundation. The company’s goal is focusing on the kind of products that serve customers and support businesses, she added. Google’s search feature can potentially skew a major national election toward one candidate over another, according to Robert Epstein, a research psychologist at the American Institute for Behavioral Research and Technology. Research he published in 2017 suggests Google’s bias affected the vote in the 2016 election.…

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Censorship, Antitrust Probes: Big Tech Is Back to Fighting Familiar Foes After Taking on Coronavirus

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Amazon, Twitter, and other major tech companies are facing intense criticism on antitrust issues and censorship claims in the months since government officials reportedly began asking for help from Silicon Valley on ways to tackle the coronavirus pandemic.

The president and lawmakers have turned their sights on Twitter and Amazon, respectively, while Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and other attorneys general are reportedly ratcheting up their antitrust investigation targeting Google’s business model. The White House asked them in March to fight coronavirus disinformation while also assisting the government in its virus response.

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Report: Trump’s DOJ Prepares an Antitrust Investigation into Google’s Business Practice

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by Chris White   The Department of Justice is preparing an antitrust probe against Google’s search engine and business model, The Wall Street Journal reported Friday night, citing people familiar with the issue. It would be the first such investigation since the Federal Trade Commission conducted a probe of Google but closed it in 2013 without taking action. The FTC and DOJ have discussed which agency would oversee a probe of the internet giant — the commission agreed to give DOJ officials jurisdiction, TheWSJ noted. The Trump administration is focusing its attention on Google’s business model related to the company’s search. Google and the DOJ have not responded to The Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment. The FTC did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Investigating Google was in some ways a long time in the making. Conservatives and liberals have become increasingly critical of big tech. Facebook was scrutinized after Russia used its platform to intervene in American politics. Lawmakers are also unsure about the companies assurances that they are careful handling private data. Republican Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri, for instance, proposed a bill in May that would essentially block tech companies from tracking people’s locations without direct…

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SCOTUS: iPhone Users Can Sue Apple for App Monopoly

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by Kevin Daley   The Supreme Court ruled Monday that iPhone users can bring an antitrust lawsuit against Apple alleging the tech giant has monopolized the market for software applications. Justice Brett Kavanaugh delivered the 5-4 decision, joined by the high court’s liberal bloc, which may have far-reaching consequences for Silicon Valley. “The plaintiffs seek to hold retailers to account if the retailers engage in unlawful anticompetitive conduct that harms consumers who purchase from those retailers,” Kavanaugh wrote. “That is why we have antitrust law.” The iPhone app market is a tightly-controlled system. iPhones are programmed so they cannot download apps outside the Apple-administered App Store, and users who modify their devices to download apps from other sources — called jailbreaking — risk adverse consequences like voiding their warranty. What’s more, Apple has broad discretion over products in its store, and may remove apps for any reason whatever. Other requirements include a mandate to price all apps on a .99 scale, like $1.99 and $2.99. When an application is purchased, Apple collects a 30 percent commission and gives the other 70 percent to the developer. For subscriptions, Apple collects a 15 percent share after the first year. Taken together, the plaintiffs say…

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Supreme Court Open to Antitrust Lawsuit Against Apple

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  U.S. Supreme Court justices on Monday appeared open to letting a lawsuit proceed against Apple Inc that accused it of breaking federal antitrust laws by monopolizing the market for iPhone software applications and causing consumers to overpay. The nine justices heard an hour of arguments in an appeal by the Cupertino, California-based technology company of a lower court’s decision to revive the proposed class-action lawsuit filed in federal court in California in 2011 by a group of iPhone users seeking monetary damages. The lawsuit said Apple violated federal antitrust laws by requiring apps to be sold through the company’s App Store and then taking a 30 percent commission from the purchases. The case may hinge on how the justices will apply one of its past decisions to the claims against Apple. That 1977 ruling limited damages for anti-competitive conduct to those directly overcharged rather than indirect victims who paid an overcharge passed on by others. Apple was backed by Republican President Donald Trump’s administration. Some liberal and conservative justices sharply questioned an attorney for Apple and U.S. Solicitor General Noel Francisco, who argued on behalf of the administration on the company’s side, over their argument that the consumers were…

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Report: Google And Mastercard Strike Secret Deal To Track Customers In-Store Purchases

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by Kyle Perisic   Google and Mastercard have reportedly struck a secret deal to monitor users’ in-store purchases, to collect data on what Google ads have resulted in purchases. After years of negotiations, Google paid Mastercard millions of dollars for its customer data, Bloomberg reported Thursday, citing two anonymous sources. The two could be sharing ad revenue, Bloomberg added but also reported a Google spokeswoman denied that claim. “People don’t expect what they buy physically in a store to be linked to what they are buying online,” said advocacy group Electronic Privacy Information Center’s Christine Bannan. “There’s just far too much burden that companies place on consumers and not enough responsibility being taken by companies to inform users what they’re doing and what rights they have.” Knowing which ads have resulted in purchases would make targeted ads — specialized ads tailored to specific individuals — much more valuable. Thus far, it has been almost impossible to tell if an online ad has resulted in a purchase. “Before we launched this beta product last year, we built a new, double-blind encryption technology that prevents both Google and our partners from viewing our respective users’ personally identifiable information,” Google said in a statement, according to Bloomberg.…

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Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey Begins Media Tour to Explain Why He Didn’t Censor Alex Jones . . . Yet

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Alex Jones

by Kyle Perisic   Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey began his tour with media networks to explain Twitter’s speech policies after the backlash he faced from not banning Alex Jones like other tech giants. Dorsey is planning on speaking with Lester Holt on NBC’s “Nightly News” later in August and Brian Stelter on CNN’s “Reliable Sources” Aug. 12. Stelter’s interview with Dorsey, the last CEO of a major platform not to ban Jones or InfoWars, has reportedly been in the works for several weeks, Axios reported Wednesday. Dorsey began his tour Wednesday with Fox News host Sean Hannity on his radio program, where he clarified the company’s decision not to ban Jones. “This is not easy,” Dorsey said, adding that Twitter hasn’t done a great job explaining the company’s use of the algorithms to enforce its policies. Dorsey also said Twitter hasn’t done a good job communicating what the company’s principles are or why certain accounts are banned to those users or to the media. “We have a lot more work to do there,” he said. Dorsey also insisted on Hannity’s radio show that Twitter does not shadowban users. Shadowbanning is using algorithms to make users or content harder to search for on social…

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The AT&T-Time Warner Merger Approved, Mass Media Consolidation Could Lead the Way to One-Party Rule in the U.S.

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ATT and Time Warner Cable

By Robert Romano   A vibrant and healthy democracy depends on the free marketplace of ideas. Call it what you want. Viewpoint diversity. Access to alternative views. In today’s media and information-driven society and culture, being able to find the opposing view on an issue, to compare the pros and cons of public policy matters or different products and services, is critical to how the American people make decisions about just about everything. What to buy? Who to vote for? What to watch? Which music to listen to? What to wear? The plethora of choices we have today is owed entirely to the openness of the Internet and other media that facilitates and enables brand development. But what if that process could become compromised or disrupted in a bid to control media? To control what messages were available to the public? This is the very real danger facing policymakers today in an environment increasingly moving towards mass media consolidation. With federal judge Richard Leon’s approval of the $107 billion AT&T-Time Warner merger, allowing the two companies to combine, the floodgates are opening for content distributors like AT&T — which owns Directv — to also own much of content that plays on those…

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Donald Trump Says He’s Had Concerns with Amazon’s Business Model Prior to the Election

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President Trump said Thursday that he’s had concerns with Amazon’s business model long before running for president. “I have stated my concerns with Amazon long before the Election. Unlike others, they pay little or no taxes to state & local governments, use our Postal System as their Delivery Boy (causing tremendous loss to the U.S.), and are putting many thousands of retailers out of business!” Mr. Trump tweeted.

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Disney-Fox Mega-Merger Faces Serious Questions over Anti-Competitive Behavior

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By Rick Manning   Disney and 21st Century Fox have proposed another massive media merger that may rise or fall on Disney’s anti-competitive lawsuit against a small Utah company that allows parents to filter mature content such as violence, strong language, or sexually inappropriate images and sounds from movies and TV shows. VidAngel has become a hot topic amongst social conservative groups whose members want to be able to watch a movie or TV show at home without bringing mature elements into their homes, especially in light of Hollywood’s recent scandals over sexual harassment and parent’s subsequent concerns over how to protect their kids from messages encouraging sexual objectification. Since Disney and other movie producers continue to provide cleaned-up TV and airline versions of their products, there should be no problem with customers having the ability to self-police what shows in their homes. In fact, Congress has already acted once to ensure that parents can decide whether to filter a movie or not in their home. In 2005, they passed the Family Movie Act which specifically allowed the filtering of movies for private home viewing. Unfortunately, now that technology has moved to a streaming world, the federal courts, at Disney’s urging, have failed to extend this…

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