Posted on 06/12/2021 3:20:09 PM PDT by RandFan
A group of bipartisan House members introduced legislation Friday that would break up Apple, Amazon, Google, and Facebook.
According to a press release from Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA), the bills aim to “expand opportunities for consumers, workers, and small business owners by holding unregulated Big Tech monopolies accountable for anti-competitive conduct.”
The legislation has support from both sides of the aisle.
“Not only is self-regulation by Big Tech patently ineffective, but it also comes at the direct expense of workers, consumers, small businesses, our local communities, and the free press,” said Rep. Jayapal — who helps to lead the House Antitrust Subcommittee — in the press release. “From Amazon and Facebook to Google and Apple, it is clear that these unregulated tech giants have become too big to care and too powerful to ever put people over profits.”
Meanwhile, Rep. Ken Buck (R-CO) asserted that “Big Tech has abused its dominance in the marketplace to crush competitors, censor speech, and control how we see and understand the world.”
(Excerpt) Read more at dailywire.com ...
I support all such bills.
Bust up Big Tech.
Google has more than 90% of internet searches.
I don’t know whether you’re grossly ignorant about the dominance of the Tech giants in their various fields and how they have colluded repeatedly as a cartel to engage in anticompetitive practices, or you’re just a shill for Big Tech.
Deplatforming Alex Jones - all of them - within days was the first example.
Then they did the same to GAB to try to protect cartel member, Twitter.
Then they did the same to Parler to try to protect cartel member Twitter.
Amazon, Apple and Google all did so literally within days of each other. They shut of servers and technical support in violation of contracts. They banned the app on the two platforms that control the vast vast majority of apps. They furthermore did so in bad faith (they claimed Parler was used to coordinate the Jan 6th mostly peaceful protests when in fact, Twitter and Facebook were used more than Parler was for this).
What percent of the market for apps do Apple and Google control?
What percent of the cellphone software market do Apple and Google control?
What percent of video streaming does Alphabet (aka Google) control?
In all cases the percentages of those markets they control are massive. Furthermore they have used one monopoly - internet search in this case - to bring about another - video streaming.
Huge market dominance
using one monopoly to create another
anticompetitive practices
collusion
These are all the classic legal tests to determine if something is an illegal monopoly. Big Tech fails on all counts.
Twitter is by far the easiest of the cartel members (Amazon, Facebook, Apple, Alphabet) to overthrow. The barriers to entry are much lower.
Notice that its Twitter the other cartel members had to step in repeatedly to protect as in Gab and Parler. Without the protection of the other cartel members, those other services would have taken away a significant percentage of the market share from Twitter. Break the power of the other cartel members and Twitter would find itself quite vulnerable.
Nothing can be done. It’s the rise of the sun. Live with it.
They’ll just gobble up something else. And even without those they’re still Facebook and Google.
Bezos retired. Who cares if 80 million Americans hate you? That means nothing. Everybody hated MS, look at the end result of that monopoly action: not a damn thing. Their lawyers DID stop it. And again, worst comes to worst they “move” off shore, untouchable.
Geeze TV used to called the greatest communication platform in the world. Poor TV. Meanwhile, back in reality Facebook and Twitter are still billboards, yes people can put up reply billboards, but they’re billboards, and have the right to sensor.
I’m pointing out truth. What exactly is the internet search market? It doesn’t actually make money, it’s a source of brand recognition.
So what if they deplatformed him. He found another platform.
Wrong questions again. How much of your grocery store’s market does your grocery store own? Oh yeah, all of it. That’s not a market. Try again.
Who pays for cellphone software? Not a market.
Actually youtube is a negligible percentage of the streaming market. Especially because it’s directly competing with Facebook, Apple, and Amazon.
Most of what you listed aren’t markets. And where they are they do not have monopoly levels.
You have failed all your legal tests. And this bill, if it passes, will burn in the courts.
Who cares if 80 million people hate you?
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I can see you’ve never felt, much less endured, the sting of bad press and the resulting enmity of the general public.
If an item doesn't say "sold by Amazon" then it's a crapshoot.
Here are a couple of articles which tell you how to avoid being tricked by Amazon:
BWAHAHAHA bad press, yeah that matters to the richest companies in the world. Everybody has hated Microsoft for 30 freaking years, they’re stinging all the way to the bank.
Restrict them to owning one platform. It’s only part of the reform, but it should be part of it. Basically, force competition.
And then they spin up a holding company in Curacao that buys up all the parts immune to all American regulation. You can’t force competition.
Good point. I’m not deranged enough to expect consistency from governments.
It will be interesting to watch what happens to SiriusXM, when Elon Musk’s massive constellation of communications satellites is fully operational. SiriusXM will immediately face competition from every radio station currently available over the internet & it will get worse from there. Musk will soon have as much power over global communications as every cable company combined.
“That means nothing. Everybody hated MS, look at the end result of that monopoly action: not a damn thing.”
One huge thing resulted from the MS anti-trust actions — Apple Computer still exists. When Apple was nearly kaput, MS kicked in enough money to keep them going — mainly, as a way of ensuring that they (MS) had enough competition to keep government off their backs.
Not really. Apple didn’t have enough market share to matter, investing in Apple was really more thumbing their nose at the government “we’re so big we can give money to the competition and you really can’t control us”. The end result of MS monopoly kerfuffle really shows you how helpless the government is in all this. Basically all MS had to do was end the per-processor license model, which was questionable at best, and make it so users could uninstall IE. And that last part was mostly because of European regulations. And Netscape still died. And IE is still on most computers, even though MS doesn’t even want it there anymore.
Here’s you a link to just 10 people who were destroyed financially, died, committed suicide or otherwise negatively effected when the press and public turned on them.
https://listverse.com/2014/10/23/10-people-whose-lives-were-completely-ruined-by-the-media/
The plural of anecdote isn’t fact. Plenty of people handle bad press just fine. Including the CEOs of every company on this target list. I suppose it all depends on how much money you got. If you’re rich enough you can just buy the companies giving you bad press and fire the journalist.
Sorry but no. Those are markets. Internet search is most definitely a market.
This has been the age old trick monopolists have tried to pull - define the market as broadly as possible so as to claim that they don’t hold a massive market share and thus aren’t a monopoly. The Big Tech cartel is composed of monopolies and furthermore they collude to engage in anticompetitive practices.
It is your analysis that has failed.
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