House antitrust committee releases its report into big tech.

[Cope]

The House antitrust committee has released the findings of its investigation into online competition. The report - which is scathing in its criticisms of Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google - provides a basis for expanding regulations in the digital market place and for breaking up big tech monopolies through a process of "structural separation". Although the committee was led by Democrats, conservatives (who have long accused big tech companies of political discrimination) are likely to be satisfied with the investigation's findings and recommendations.

The Guardian summarized the significance of the report and its discoveries:

Its [the report's] publication is still a landmark event because it marks the first concerted (and properly resourced) critical interrogation of a new group of unaccountable powers that is roaming loose in our democracies: tech companies. Its guiding spirit was something said by the great Supreme Court justice Louis Brandeis many moons ago: “We must make our choice. We may have democracy or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we cannot have both.”

Only four tech companies were targeted – Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google. How Microsoft escaped scrutiny is a mystery (to me anyway); perhaps it’s because that company had its day in court long ago and survived to become the handmaiden of governments and organisations everywhere and is therefore part of the ruling establishment.

The inquiry that led to the report started in 2019 as an investigation into the state of competition online. It had three aims: “1) to document competition problems in digital markets; 2) examine whether dominant firms are engaging in anticompetitive conduct; and 3) assess whether existing antitrust laws, competition policies and current enforcement levels are adequate to address these issues.” Crudely summarised, its conclusions are: there are indeed serious competitions problems in digital markets; dominant firms are behaving in grossly anticompetitive ways; existing laws do need updating; and enforcement has, to date, been patchy and in many cases woefully inadequate.

The cynical response to these findings is that we knew all that, so what’s new? Two answers: first, that we didn’t have evidence on such a massive and detailed scale and to make reforms possible in a law-abiding democracy you need evidence-based policy; and second, this is the first time that legislators in the jurisdiction that still matters most in the tech arena – the United States – have started to take these things seriously.

Finally US politicians are taking the fight to the tech giants, The Guardian, Oct 10th.

The key recommendations of the report aim to "restore competition to the digital economy" (pp. 377 onward). They were as follows:

I. To Reduce conflicts of interest through structural separations and line of business restrictions.
II. To Implement rules to prevent favouritism, discrimination and self-preferencing.
III. To Promote innovation through interoperability and open access.
IV. To Reduce market power through merger presumptions.
V. To Create and even playing field for the free and diverse press.
VI. To Prohibit abuse of superior bargaining power and require due process.

[Lord Thesaurian]

It will be interesting to see how the political battle lines will be drawn in the event it becomes an actual fight. Political donations by Big Tech are fairly small compared to revenues or to other large industries, but that could change if the feds get serious about regulation. This report could be the beginning of a meaningful effort to address the concerns therein - or it could be a formal shot across the bow designed to remind these companies they need to play ball like the monopolists of yesteryear. It will take more than gestures to bring them to heel in any case, especially given that corporate power has compromised national security and threatens progress there as well, particularly against the machinations of Red China. There was once such a man.

The tremendous and highly complex industrial development which went on with ever accelerated rapidity during the latter half of the nineteenth century brings us face to face, at the beginning of the twentieth, with very serious social problems. The old laws, and the old customs which had almost the binding force of law, were once quite sufficient to regulate the accumulation and distribution of wealth. Since the industrial changes which have so enormously increased the productive power of mankind, they are no longer sufficient.

The growth of cities has gone on beyond comparison faster than the growth of the country, and the upbuilding of the great industrial centers has meant a startling increase, not merely in the aggregate of wealth, but in the number of very large individual, and especially of very large corporate, fortunes. The creation of these great corporate fortunes has not been due to the tariff nor to any other governmental action, but to natural causes in the business world, operating in other countries as they operate in our own.

The process has aroused much antagonism, a great part of which is wholly without warrant. It is not true that as the rich have grown richer the poor have grown poorer. On the contrary, never before has the average man, the wage-worker, the farmer, the small trader, been so well off as in this country and at the present time. There have been abuses connected with the accumulation of wealth; yet it remains true that a fortune accumulated in legitimate business can be accumulated by the person specially benefited only on condition of conferring immense incidental benefits upon others. Successful enterprise, of the type which benefits all mankind, can only exist if the conditions are such as to offer great prizes as the rewards of success.

Moreover, it cannot too often be pointed out that to strike with ignorant violence at the interests of one set of men almost inevitably endangers the interests of all. The fundamental rule in our national life --the rule which underlies all others--is that, on the whole, and in the long run, we shall go up or down together. There are exceptions; and in times of prosperity some will prosper far more, and in times of adversity, some will suffer far more, than others; but speaking generally, a period of good times means that all share more or less in them, and in a period of hard times all feel the stress to a greater or less degree. It surely ought not to be necessary to enter into any proof of this statement; the memory of the lean years which began in 1893 is still vivid, and we can contrast them with the conditions in this very year which is now closing. Disaster to great business enterprises can never have its effects limited to the men at the top. It spreads throughout, and while it is bad for everybody, it is worst for those farthest down. The capitalist may be shorn of his luxuries; but the wage-worker may be deprived of even bare necessities.


There is a widespread conviction in the minds of the American people that the great corporations known as trusts are in certain of their features and tendencies hurtful to the general welfare. This springs from no spirit of envy or uncharitableness, nor lack of pride in the great industrial achievements that have placed this country at the head of the nations struggling for commercial supremacy. It does not rest upon a lack of intelligent appreciation of the necessity of meeting changing and changed conditions of trade with new methods, nor upon ignorance of the fact that combination of capital in the effort to accomplish great things is necessary when the world's progress demands that great things be done. It is based upon sincere conviction that combination and concentration should be, not prohibited, but supervised and within reasonable limits controlled; and in my judgment this conviction is right.

It is no limitation upon property rights or freedom of contract to require that when men receive from Government the privilege of doing business under corporate form, which frees them from individual responsibility, and enables them to call into their enterprises the capital of the public, they shall do so upon absolutely truthful representations as to the value of the property in which the capital is to be invested. Corporations engaged in interstate commerce should be regulated if they are found to exercise a license working to the public injury. It should be as much the aim of those who seek for social- betterment to rid the business world of crimes of cunning as to rid the entire body politic of crimes of violence. Great corporations exist only because they are created and safeguarded by our institutions; and it is therefore our right and our duty to see that they work in harmony with these institutions.

http://www.emersonkent.com/speeches/...the_trusts.htm

[Heathen Hammer]

Sounds like a good start. I'm actually surprised by the fact that Democrats are the ones leading this incentive, especially in light of partisan nature of big tech censorship.

[Cope]

Sounds like a good start. I'm actually surprised by the fact that Democrats are the ones leading this incentive, especially in light of partisan nature of big tech censorship.

The Democrats may be benefitting from big tech's partisanship currently, but they're intelligent enough to recognize that this is about power in the long-term. Allowing corporations like Google to be the gatekeeper's of information threatens the Democratic Party too.

[Cope]

The FCC is getting further involved with the dispute over section 230 after Twitter and Facebook are alleged to have interfered in the election by throttling negative stories about Joe Biden.

Over the past few days, both social media companies have censored (to varying degrees) a New York Post story which accuses Biden and his son, Hunter, of corruption in Ukraine. Most of the complaints concern the discrepancies between the treatment of unsubstantiated allegations against the president (which are allowed to be circulated) and the treatment of unsubstantiated allegations against Biden (which are quickly shut down). In the past, both Biden and Trump have called for section 230 to be repealed.

FCC Chairman Ajit Pai announced on Thursday afternoon that he intends to move forward with an FCC “rulemaking” to clarify the meaning of Section 230 following widespread accusations this week that tech companies are censoring news stories that are damaging to the presidential campaign of Democrat Joe Biden.

“Members of all three branches of the federal government have expressed serious concerns about the prevailing interpretation of the immunity set forth in Section 230 of the Communications Act,” Pai said in a statement. “There is bipartisan support in Congress to reform the law. The U.S. Department of Commerce has petitioned the Commission to ‘clarify ambiguities in section 230.’ And earlier this week, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas pointed out that courts have relied upon ‘policy and purpose arguments to grant sweeping protections to Internet platforms’ that appear to go far beyond the actual text of the provision.”

“As elected officials consider whether to change the law, the question remains: What does Section 230 currently mean? Many advance an overly broad interpretation that in some cases shields social media companies from consumer protection laws in a way that has no basis in the text of Section 230,” Pai continued. “The Commission’s General Counsel has informed me that the FCC has the legal authority to interpret Section 230. Consistent with this advice, I intend to move forward with a rulemaking to clarify its meaning.”

“Throughout my tenure at the Federal Communications Commission, I have favored regulatory parity, transparency, and free expression,” the statement concluded. “Social media companies have a First Amendment right to free speech. But they do not have a First Amendment right to a special immunity denied to other media outlets, such as newspapers and broadcasters.”

The move by the tech companies to censor reports from the New York Post about the business dealings of Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, have spurred top officials to accuse those companies of interfering in the U.S. election.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) said, “We have seen big tech, we’ve seen Twitter and Facebook actively interfering in this election in a way that has no precedent in the history of our country.”

Officials from the Trump campaign, Donald Trump Jr., and other law makers have also accused the companies of “election interference.”

FCC Chairman Begins Taking Action On Section 230 Following Alleged Social Media ‘Election Interference’, Daily Wire, Oct 15th.

[Lord Thesaurian]

Now that the Trump era is winding down, Facebook is reportedly planning to buddy up with the incoming Biden administration.

"A lot of the Democrats simply hate Facebook right now," an anonymous Facebook employee told the Financial Times. Facebook is afraid that with a Democrat in the White House and increased scrutiny being placed on big tech companies, it may become impossible for the company to avoid regulation. So Facebook will do what it does best: suck up to the people in power.

https://www.mic.com/p/now-that-trump...biden-45367713

Apparently FT called the post-Capitol riot crackdown on the right wing weeks ago. It’s a chilling trend: first a reluctance to regulate the groundswell of extremism that achieved broad reach from the political fringe to begin with, now seizing upon a convenient crisis to offer a display of how useful they can be to the incoming Democrat White House and Senate. It’s reasonable to juxtapose this with an aim to continue delaying or limiting the prospect of anti trust regulation.