I saw some clips of questions that made them squirm. But hearings in Washington are a clown show generally. Adding the topic of tech just makes it worse. Let’s not forget this is the town that has Hank Johnson... the representative who asked if the island of Guam could *tip over* because of extra military equipment and people. Now add the words “developer, platform, application and network” to the conversation in an election year. The result is what we saw with this hearing.
I saw some clips of questions that made them squirm. But hearings in Washington are a clown show generally. Adding the topic of tech just makes it worse. Let’s not forget this is the town that has Hank Johnson... the representative who asked if the island of Guam could *tip over* because of extra military equipment and people. Now add the words “developer, platform, application and network” to the conversation in an election year. The result is what we saw with this hearing.
I'm okay with the squirming. That's the whole point of the hearings after all.
But, the squirming questions were mostly irrelevant to the topic of the hearing, and instead were pet topics of the folks at hand.
I saw some clips of questions that made them squirm. But hearings in Washington are a clown show generally. Adding the topic of tech just makes it worse. Let’s not forget this is the town that has Hank Johnson... the representative who asked if the island of Guam could *tip over* because of extra military equipment and people. Now add the words “developer, platform, application and network” to the conversation in an election year. The result is what we saw with this hearing.
No fan of Hank Johnson at all but he was ... not speaking literally and it was obvious in context. That so many people believed that he was serious in any way mystifies me.
I saw some clips of questions that made them squirm. But hearings in Washington are a clown show generally. Adding the topic of tech just makes it worse. Let’s not forget this is the town that has Hank Johnson... the representative who asked if the island of Guam could *tip over* because of extra military equipment and people. Now add the words “developer, platform, application and network” to the conversation in an election year. The result is what we saw with this hearing.
I'm okay with the squirming. That's the whole point of the hearings after all.
But, the squirming questions were mostly irrelevant to the topic of the hearing, and instead were pet topics of the folks at hand.
Keep in mind, this is ALWAYS the case. Reps are there to ostensibly represent the interests and win the votes of their constituents. Their level of incompetence probably matches that of their base, otherwise they’d not keep getting elected.
But you can only say that because Democrats and Republicans alike displayed equal ignorance, and favored their own political careers instead of doing the job they said they were there for.
And this was a surprise why? This whole this was targeted at political ads for the fall election.
In a bigger vein why is this a subject for antitrust concerns at all. Whatever abuse these companies may have done, or at least are being accused of doing, none of them is a Monopoly.
Which brings me back to my first point. This was all about posturing, getting clips for the fall political ads, making it look like they are doing something, and distracting from the real problems the country is facing that they are squabbling about, rather than salving.
They aren't being accused of being a traditional monopoly, no. But what they are accused of is being too big, too wealthy, too powerful and as a result exerting too much influence on the global economy, politics and culture. Case in point: Dell is #34 on the Fortunate 500 with a market capitalization of $45 billion. Apple? Market capitalization $1.1 trillion.
Then there is the outsized reach of the likes of Amazon, Facebook, Instagram, Gmail, YouTube etc. As I said in another thread yesterday most of these politicians - as well as the people who write "how big is too big" articles - are really after Amazon (labor issues), Facebook (because it allows people to post ideas that they disagree with and Hillary Clinton lost) and Google (Snowden and again Hillary Clinton lost) but because Apple is so big it is impossible to go after their real targets without at least pretending to go after the company that is going to be the unchallenged #1 on the planet for the foreseeable future too.
There is only one slight problem with your analysis: the law as it stands has nothing whatsoever to do with it. Wishing for some weird new law that defines "monopoly" to your liking isn't going to make it happen.
The one interesting question that was asked yesterday was about whether China steals technology.
It was disappointing to see Pichai, Cook, and Bezos dissemble on that question. The only one that bluntly and clearly answered the question was Zuckerberg (but I suppose his stakes in providing that answer were low).
I liked the question, but it had absolutely nothing to do with the topics at hand.
Disagree. If someone steals your technology, they can become your competitor. If that is the case, it weakens the "monopoly" argument.
I saw some clips of questions that made them squirm. But hearings in Washington are a clown show generally. Adding the topic of tech just makes it worse. Let’s not forget this is the town that has Hank Johnson... the representative who asked if the island of Guam could *tip over* because of extra military equipment and people. Now add the words “developer, platform, application and network” to the conversation in an election year. The result is what we saw with this hearing.
I'm okay with the squirming. That's the whole point of the hearings after all.
But, the squirming questions were mostly irrelevant to the topic of the hearing, and instead were pet topics of the folks at hand.
Keep in mind, this is ALWAYS the case. Reps are there to ostensibly represent the interests and win the votes of their constituents. Their level of incompetence probably matches that of their base, otherwise they’d not keep getting elected.
Parties don’t factor into this. The author gives politicians, and by extension, government, far too much credit. Government is inefficient at everything and effective only at breaking things. Voting is the process of choosing who you want to wield that destructive power. It’s a sign of cultural maturity that nearly half of Americans choose to abstain. If it was truly apathy causing low voter turnout, registrars of voters would have the courage to put a none of the above option on ballots; but of course they don’t. Abstaining from the vote altogether is the only means that government has left to lodge a no confidence vote because it can't dare expose its illegitimacy by allowing a tracked none of the above option on ballots.
I saw some clips of questions that made them squirm. But hearings in Washington are a clown show generally. Adding the topic of tech just makes it worse. Let’s not forget this is the town that has Hank Johnson... the representative who asked if the island of Guam could *tip over* because of extra military equipment and people. Now add the words “developer, platform, application and network” to the conversation in an election year. The result is what we saw with this hearing.
I'm okay with the squirming. That's the whole point of the hearings after all.
But, the squirming questions were mostly irrelevant to the topic of the hearing, and instead were pet topics of the folks at hand.
Keep in mind, this is ALWAYS the case. Reps are there to ostensibly represent the interests and win the votes of their constituents. Their level of incompetence probably matches that of their base, otherwise they’d not keep getting elected.
Oh no. How terrible for them.
That’s how reps and their elections work. People who know nothing vote for people who “properly” represent them.
And if the US was a direct democracy, it would be much, much worse.
I liked the editorial, but it would benefit as a critique by including a clear (maybe bulleted) summary of the issues that were not effectively addressed by legislators. Right now, it’s an emphatic statement that an opportunity was missed, but I’m not clear on your top 5 (for example) substantive issues that you really wanted to see hashed out. Would also be interested in AI’s recommended reforms. It sounds like some interesting nuggets were contained in documents handed over to the committee — or was it just the odd thing like the Jobs correspondence on Kindle and the internal right to repair debate?
I know you’ve done a lot of reporting on this for a long time — so I’ll look for this kind of summary on your site. (I’m an AI quick skimmer as opposed to avid reader - my bad.) And yes, deeply depressing that an opportunity was missed to hold feet to the fire here. Please do keep this thread open!
I’m disappointed that not one member of the Committee brought up the subject of Section 230 of the Telecommunication Act and if immunity should still apply since, Apple aside, they have evolved from platforms to publishers.
By no legal definition has even Twitter or Facebook evolved from a platform to a publisher. That may change with the ongoing reform, but today, all of them are very clearly platforms.
Bill Barr clearly disagrees with you. In an interview two weeks ago he shared the following comments:
I think there are — clearly these, these entities are now engaged in censorship. And they originally held themselves out as open forums where people, where the third parties could come and express their views and they built up a tremendous network of eyeballs.
They had a lot of market power based on that presentation. And now they are acting much more like publishers because they’re censoring particular viewpoints and putting their own content in there to diminish the impact of various people’s views.
Apple itself is guilty of censorship as well, for instance several months ago they banned all apps dealing with covid which didn't originate from a "trusted source". Whether you agree with Apple's decision or not, giving certain people the opportunity to speak while shutting others out is of course the very definition of censorship.
So if you want to censor certain viewpoints, you're going to lose your Section 230 immunity.
Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act literally requires moderation, and beyond that, companies are afforded first amendment protections. There is no "censor certain viewpoint" carveout in section 230 as it stands. He knows it, and this is why he said what he did. "Acting more like publishers" is a politically driven argument by Barr try and get the law changed to what he argued here, which neither he nor the president can do unilaterally.
Like I said, that may change with reform. But that isn't the case today.
Private companies can censor anything they want on their own platforms. There's nothing to be "guilty" of in that regard. If YouTube wanted to limit user uploads to cat videos only, they could do that. If Twitter wanted to limit posts to a single word per day, they could do that. All they really need to do is apply those standards to every user of the platform and they would be fine.
Private companies can censor anything they want on their own platforms. There's nothing to be "guilty" of in that regard. If YouTube wanted to limit user uploads to cat videos only, they could do that. If Twitter wanted to limit posts to a single word per day, they could do that. All they really need to do is apply those standards to every user of the platform and they would be fine.
For 230 protections, that's not even a requirement.
I’m disappointed that not one member of the Committee brought up the subject of Section 230 of the Telecommunication Act and if immunity should still apply since, Apple aside, they have evolved from platforms to publishers.
By no legal definition has even Twitter or Facebook evolved from a platform to a publisher. That may change with the ongoing reform, but today, all of them are very clearly platforms.
Bill Barr clearly disagrees with you. In an interview two weeks ago he shared the following comments:
I think there are — clearly these, these entities are now engaged in censorship. And they originally held themselves out as open forums where people, where the third parties could come and express their views and they built up a tremendous network of eyeballs.
They had a lot of market power based on that presentation. And now they are acting much more like publishers because they’re censoring particular viewpoints and putting their own content in there to diminish the impact of various people’s views.
Apple itself is guilty of censorship as well, for instance several months ago they banned all apps dealing with covid which didn't originate from a "trusted source". Whether you agree with Apple's decision or not, giving certain people the opportunity to speak while shutting others out is of course the very definition of censorship.
So if you want to censor certain viewpoints, you're going to lose your Section 230 immunity.
Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act literally requires moderation, and beyond that, companies are afforded first amendment protections. There is no "censor certain viewpoint" carveout in section 230 as it stands. He knows it, and this is why he said what he did. "Acting more like publishers" is a politically driven argument by Barr try and get the law changed to what he argued here, which neither he nor the president can do unilaterally.
Like I said, that may change with reform. But that isn't the case today.
To the contrary, thanks to the recent DACA ruling by the Supreme Court it’s now cemented in our system that a US President does in fact have the power of a king. A President may unilaterally issue executive orders which hold the same legal power as Congressional legislation. And succeeding Presidents cannot simply end prior executive orders, despite that being the “tradition” for generations.
SpamSandwich said: To the contrary, thanks to the recent DACA ruling by the Supreme Court it’s now cemented in our system that a US President does in fact have the power of a king. A President may unilaterally issue executive orders which hold the same legal power as Congressional legislation. And succeeding Presidents cannot simply end prior executive orders, despite that being the “tradition” for generations.
That isn't what the DACA ruling did at all. DACA represents a deferment of legal action, i.e., all the people in DACA have deportation deferred if they follow a specific set of rules provided by the executive branch. Deferment is a standard power that both the executive and judicial branches can exercise. The SC is never going to rule that deferment isn't available to the executive branch. All the SC said regarding DACA is that the Trump administration failed to follow the proper procedure for ending the program.
In addition "the power of a king" doesn't mean all that much. Kings can have vastly different amounts of power, depending on the kingdom. Many kings have less power than the US President anyway, irrespective of recent Supreme Court rulings.
Some Americans seem to thing that the title of monarch gives unlimited power, due to their unfamiliarity with the institution. Throughout history it has very rarely meant that.
SpamSandwich said: To the contrary, thanks to the recent DACA ruling by the Supreme Court it’s now cemented in our system that a US President does in fact have the power of a king. A President may unilaterally issue executive orders which hold the same legal power as Congressional legislation. And succeeding Presidents cannot simply end prior executive orders, despite that being the “tradition” for generations.
That isn't what the DACA ruling did at all. DACA represents a deferment of legal action, i.e., all the people in DACA have deportation deferred if they follow a specific set of rules provided by the executive branch. Deferment is a standard power that both the executive and judicial branches can exercise. The SC is never going to rule that deferment isn't available to the executive branch. All the SC said regarding DACA is that the Trump administration failed to follow the proper procedure for ending the program.
Please. Were the “proper procedure(s)” followed to enact DACA? The prior administration circumvented Congressional authority and the law as it stands it still unconstitutional.
SpamSandwich said: Please. Were the “proper procedure(s)” followed to enact DACA? The prior administration circumvented Congressional authority and the law as it stands it still unconstitutional.
Deferment doesn't require Congressional authority because it's not creating a law. It's postponing legal enforcement of a law. All the people who participate in DACA are not exempt from deportation, but rather have deportation deferred by the executive branch as long as they follow the guidelines set up for DACA. It's similar to a judge giving a suspended sentence or Donald Trump receiving a deferment from the Vietnam War draft.
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But, the squirming questions were mostly irrelevant to the topic of the hearing, and instead were pet topics of the folks at hand.
Disagree. If someone steals your technology, they can become your competitor. If that is the case, it weakens the "monopoly" argument.
And if the US was a direct democracy, it would be much, much worse.
Like I said, that may change with reform. But that isn't the case today.
Some Americans seem to thing that the title of monarch gives unlimited power, due to their unfamiliarity with the institution. Throughout history it has very rarely meant that.