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United States Justice Department Launching Antitrust Review of Major Tech Companies
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Where will progressives practice their image posturing and identity politics then?
ONE person on MSNBC said something that they have now backtracked on. That's not the entire media.
It just becomes the entire media when Fox News wants to place blame.
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Facebook is what the person signed in is.
If you're ultra-conservative, Facebook is ultra-conservative. All your friends are conservative and all the ads you get are conservative.
Same if you're super into foot-fetishes, cats, feminism, motocross, whatever.
Lets use a traditional mall as an example. Retailers have to pay rent for space. In Apple’s case it’s a high end mall where there is a lot of traffic from people who spend lots of money, but instead of charging flat rate rent, they charge based on how much you sell. If you don’t sell a lot you still get the access to the traffic for less money, which is generous. Also high end malls don’t have porn stores or permanent black flea markets. Having a store in Apple’s mall gives shoppers a sense of quality and confidence that when they get home their purchases aren’t going to instantly fall apart or attract a police raid.
The competition to this is the renegade Android strip malls where developers are more than welcome to sell their products with less restrictions but also less traffic from people with money to burn.
Right. And Twitter so that conservative opinion isn't blocked.
as much as I am glad somebody is looking into this, building a case from traditional monopolization practices will be hard. Maybe they'll nab Google or Amazon or Facebook but I wouldn't worry about Apple on this one.
Big tech is definitely a concern among liberals more than it is conservatives
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I’m glad you have an opinion on the issue, but that’s what the DOJ investigating so that lay people like us don’t have to
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That’s what the DOJ is investigating
Oh yeah, that would be the DOJ that has been throughly proved to have submitted false information for a warrant to spy on Trump. No, you've got that wrong, the DOJ is probably going along with Trump at this point, but the reason is so they stay out of jail and what respect is left for the DOJ remains intact. I have no doubt that there are only a minor few in the DOJ that want Trump as President, but self preservation takes over at some point.
Notice how Trump threatened to make the full Mueller report available un-redacted, then the DOJ started cooperating. Right now the DOJ is completely in self preservation mode and are covering up as many crimes as they can.
Also, one person at the top does not completely control a bureaucracy like the DOJ. If it was only Barr then we would be seeing leak after leak to the anti-Trump media.
There’s an intersection here where Dems want to limit unchecked corporate growth and Repubs want revenge.
The current GOP is built on the systematic abuse of Murdock and News Corp. That’s the model for Rush, Alex, and all the rest.
These big companies have found themselves in the position of gatekeepers. In 2016 the “hands off” tech-only approach proved destructive. (And arguably since 2008). The Right bet everything on taking over the platforms via gaming the view charts and spamming the TOS violations of opponents. These companies have slammed the door on that, hard. (Apple has been blocking extremist apps, why they’re On the list)
The intersection with the Dems is that Magazines, Newspapers, Cable TV are all caught in being made irrelevant and those are typically big influence/donations... tech companies don’t really make many political donations. The Dems think they’re making the business and free-speech side fair.
The goal is to get these big tech companies knocked down so they have to allow access to the platform but it has enough rules the right-left-Media can manipulate the platforms and not be shut out. The FTC is involved because the Right historically wins in the “gaming results” race because they have big corporate donors helping them. So in the short term, they’ll win a tiny bit... and if they burn down the house after... oops.
Amazon.com accounts for 43% of all online sales (not just in one category like clothing, music, or household - 43% of ALL online sales). Amazon Makes Up 43 Percent of All Online Sales (and ... - Inc.com
Likewise, Google.com accounts for somewhere around 76% of ALL online searches (according to netmarketshare.com)
While neither Google nor Amazon are "true monopolies" (both have competitors) they are both by far the dominant player in their industry. So much so that they have an ability to skew the market (possibly to the detriment of consumers).
In sharp contrast, the oil and gas market is much more fragmented with Exxon Mobile being the single biggest player but Chevron, Valero, Phillips 66, and Marathon all being major players. None of these companies even come close to controlling 1/4 of the oil market whereas Google controls over 3/4 of the search market and Amazon is approaching 1/2 of the online sales market. From an anti-trust perspective (ignoring the whole other issue of claims of censorship / political bias) there is a legitimate reason for DOJ to at least look into whether "big tech" is violating any anti-trust laws. I really don't think Apple has anything to worry about but Google and Amazon might.
Borderline conspiracy nutter talk. You should change your handle to ‘madhatter’.
Wasn't Elizabeth Warren one of the first ones to claim Facebook, Google, Amazon and Apple need to be broke up? She's a socialist so I don't think this is being pushed by the capitalist conservatives. There might be a few conservatives that want them broken up for political reasons. I actually think the liberals want these companies broken up so they end up failing and can be taken over by the government. Think about how amazing a US government ran Apple would be?
The real problem is monopolization. It's almost impossible to not break these laws and regulations when you are trying to be a one-stop shop for everything.
I do not think Warren has much pull in the Trump's DOJ.Wasn't Elizabeth Warren one of the first ones to claim Facebook, Google, Amazon and Apple need to be broke up? She's a socialist so I don't think this is being pushed by the capitalist conservatives. There might be a few conservatives that want them broken up for political reasons. I actually think the liberals want these companies broken up so they end up failing and can be taken over by the government. Think about how amazing a US government ran Apple would be?
It's antitrust though so that's not the same thing. They're looking at any ways big companies might be using their influence to stifle competition. Your example would be more fitting if some real estate developer owned so much land in a given city that he was able to unfairly influence prices and stop competitors from buying property.
That said, Apple doesn't really dominate any of those markets. They do control their own App Store but they don't own the entire market for App Stores across all platforms so it's a shaky argument to say they have a monopoly. And even then, the DOJ would have to find evidence that Apple is using that to somehow skew the market in their favor unfairly and at the expense of their competitors. I just don't see how that argument applies to Apple in any way, but who knows?
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It's not illegal to be a monopoly. What's illegal is to use your monopoly power to stifle competitors. So even if you can argue that Apple has a monopoly on App Stores (which I have yet to understand how that works given that app stores exist on other platforms) the DOJ must demonstrate that Apple has leveraged that to crush competitors.
"Dewey Defeats Truman" Is that fake news or real news? You are categorizing news based on your assumption that all "fake news" is malicious with the intent to discredit, scare or misinform. Fake news is still news. Only history will be able to sort out which is real and which is fake, not the present.
Retail, but only within a restricted domain -- iOS Apps. Monopolistic practices can take place even within a slice of a larger market. I happen to think that Apple can make a good case here, but it's a valid question as to whether Apple is engaging in monopolistic practices.
What about your assumption of what the definition of "fake news" is? Are you using a "fake definition"? And in answer to your question, "Dewey Defeats Truman" was "wrong", not "fake". It was a legitimate attempt to provide real news based on the information available prior to a deadline. "Wrong" and "fake" are not the same thing. The implied intent is completely different. If you believe they are, trying telling your boss he said something fake the next time he makes an error.
what is this identity politics I keep reading about? cons use this as a talking point but they don't define it. can you define this?
Isn't caging people based on their identity the most base form of identity politics?
Telling people that "they" are taking your jobs is identity politics
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Wasn't Elizabeth Warren one of the first ones to claim Facebook, Google, Amazon and Apple need to be broke up? She's a socialist so I don't think this is being pushed by the capitalist conservatives. There might be a few conservatives that want them broken up for political reasons. I actually think the liberals want these companies broken up so they end up failing and can be taken over by the government. Think about how amazing a US government ran Apple would be?
Ewwww...A socialist! I hope that was uttered with the required half-sneer and slow head-shaking!
Do you want the fire department to save your life and home when it's on fire. If so, you're a socialist. How about a country-wide public road system and maintenance? Socialist. Over 65 and like Medicare? Socialist. Reap the benefits of a "free" K-12 public education? Socialist. Enjoy the clean air that's the result of government regulation? Socialist. Rely on and are thankful when the Coast Guard saves your life when your boat takes on water? You're a socialist.
I could go on with dozens more.
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OK, I'm not going to dwell on the essential details you left out or spun to create this a narrative. The most important object is your assumption that a continued telephone monopoly by old school AT&T would have led to Western Electric being a player in commercial 5G. But that implies that there would still be a single provider of phone services in the USA, that would provide a guaranteed market for western Electric products, and that provider would be an aggressive player in deploying new-tech cell services. But old AT&T's business was stodgy, uncompetitive, and conservative at offering new services, as you would expect from a monopoly. For years, they kept long distance rates extremely high, even which automated switching systems dropped their internal costs down to the level where they were nearly the same as local costs. Western Electric's product development was focused on increasing the reliability and cost-effectiveness of deploying existing phone services. If you think cellular service development in the USA lagged some other countries; it would likely have been far worse with a continuing Ma Bell monopoly, where they would have been very reluctant to cut into the extraordinary profits coming from their landline and long-distance services.
They myth of Apple's high end mall full of shoppers ready to spend big money has been shown as false with the apple news+ attempt.