Australia’s bold move to force tech giants to start paying for the news appears to be reigniting U.S. efforts to hold Google and Facebook to account for the gloomy state of the local news industry. Momentum is building for a new version of a bipartisan bill first introduced in 2019 that would allow U.S. news publishers to band together to negotiate for payments by tech giants that link to their news content.
The House Judiciary Antitrust Subcommittee plans to hold a series of hearings on proposed bills to rein in “the rise and abuse of market power online” and adjust antitrust laws accordingly. Both Republicans and Democrats have concerns that antitrust laws were not nimble enough to capture Web giants’ efforts to buy start-up competitors before they became full-fledged competition and, importantly for antitrust law, before they triggered Hart Scott Rodino automatic antitrust reviews.
Analysts estimate that the tax will generate up to $250 million for schools in the state in the first year. It will also probably face fierce legal challenges.
Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) last week proposed an amendment to a budget bill that would prohibit the merger of some Big Tech companies by presumptively preventing any merger or acquisitions involving a “market-dominant online platform.” That would mean the dominant player would have to affirmatively show that a merger or purchase was not anticompetitive.
The incoming head of the Senate antitrust subcommittee favors broad changes as Democrats press the issue of perceived monopoly power.
Lawmakers say the attack on the Capitol has generated more support for tougher regulation of the industry.
Exclusives
President Biden’s nominee to serve as the secretary of Commerce, Gina Raimondo, said Tuesday a controversial law that provides tech companies a legal liability shield from third-party content posted on their platforms needs to be reformed.
Facebook and Amazon topped all other U.S. companies in federal lobbying expenditures last year, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of the most recent disclosures. It was the second straight year they outspent all other companies, including stalwarts such as AT&T and Boeing.
Department of Justice Antitrust Chief Makan Delrahim said that if the government does not find a way to harness the massive market power of those platforms to democratic policies, the country risks “devastating outcomes for our civil democratic society.” He suggested one solution could be a new “public-private” agency, the Digital Markets Rulemaking Board, with the power to regulate edge providers like social media sites.
The encrypted messaging services have become the world’s hottest apps over the last week, driven by growing anxiety over the power of the biggest tech companies and privacy concerns.
We streamed, we Zoomed, we ordered groceries and houseplants online, we created virtual villages while navigating laptop shortages to work and learn from home. In many ways, 2020′s pandemic-induced isolation […]
Technology giants, such as Google, Facebook and Twitter, could face fines of billions of pounds if they fail to remove and limit the spread of harmful online content under U.K. government proposals unveiled on Tuesday. The government of Boris Johnson announced details of its proposed Online Harms Bill, first set in motion by then-Prime Minister Theresa May in the spring of 2019, which aims to tackle child abuse and sexual abuse imagery, terrorist materials, misinformation, and other digital content.
Big tech companies now exert huge influence over what stories get told. The message is clear: Be careful who you offend.
The halcyon days of an adoring Washington are unlikely to return for America’s tech companies when Biden takes the oath of office in January, with mounting legislative and regulatory challenges to the industry — including stronger enforcement of antitrust laws — nearly certain to outlast the tenure of President Donald Trump.
Apple, Facebook, Amazon and Alphabet rallied on Thursday ahead of earnings reports from the group of technology heavyweights that has helped keep Wall Street in positive territory this year, despite the coronavirus pandemic.
Even as the Justice Department filed an antitrust suit against Google on Tuesday for unlawfully maintaining a monopoly in search and search advertising, a growing number of legal experts and economists have started questioning whether traditional antitrust is up to the task of addressing the competitive concerns raised by today’s digital behemoths. Further help, they said, is needed.
The lawsuit marks the government’s most significant attempt to protect competition since its groundbreaking case against Microsoft more than 20 years ago. It could be an opening salvo ahead of other major government antitrust actions, given ongoing investigations of major tech companies including Apple, Amazon and Facebook at both the Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission.
House Democrats blasted FCC Chairman Ajit Pai on Monday over his announcement that the commission would move forward with the Trump administration’s petition to clarify the meaning of a law that grants tech companies a legal liability shield over content posted on their websites by third parties. Democratic leaders on the House Energy and Commerce Committee accused Pai of attempting to help a “flailing President Trump” through his decision to move forward with the administration’s push to clarify Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act.
The Senate Commerce Committee voted last week to authorize subpoenas for (l-r) Twitter’s Jack Dorsey, Sundar Pichai of Google and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to force them to testify if they didn’t agree to do so voluntarily. Spokespeople for the companies said Monday that the CEOs will cooperate and appear at an Oct. 28 hearing.
A House report on how to limit the reach of Apple, Amazon, Google and Facebook has been delayed as Democrats and Republicans split on remedies.
Thursday will be a busy day on Capitol Hill on the issue of the power of Big Tech and what, if anything, to do about it. The House Judiciary Antitrust Subcommittee is holding an afternoon hearing on “Proposals to Strengthen the Antitrust Laws and Restore Competition Online.”
In comments to the House, the association’s CEO Gordon Smith says the digital giants’ dominance of advertising marketplace, control of online content put radio and TV broadcasters at competitive disadvantage.
After last month’s Facebook boycott, companies are demanding more control over how their ads appear online. And the tech companies seem to be listening.
No, Google, we’re not really in control of our data. And yes, Facebook, you profit from harmful information.
Analysis: heated exchanges raise concern over anticompetitive behavior as chair warns of companies’ “monopoly power.”
Lawmakers investigating Facebook, Amazon, Google and Apple made it clear that their allegations of antitrust abuses come with a lengthy paper trail.
Invective flew Wednesday as legislators questioned Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Sundar Pichai of Google and Tim Cook of Apple at a hearing of the House Judiciary subcommittee on antitrust. For the last year, that panel has probed the business practices of the Silicon Valley giants with an eye to determining if they need to be regulated more heavily, or even broken up.
On Wednesday, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, Google’s Sundar Pichai and Tim Cook of Apple will answer for their companies’ practices before Congress for the first time as a group. Summoned for a House hearing, they’ll raise a hand (remotely) and swear to tell the truth, in the manner of tycoons of Wall Street or the tobacco industry in earlier high-octane televised shamings.
Congress will have to wait a little longer to grill Mark Zuckerberg and other top tech CEOs about their companies’ apparent market dominance. Originally scheduled for Monday, the House Judiciary Antitrust Subcommittee has decided to postpone the hearing so that members of Congress can recognize the memory of Rep. John Lewis who is lying in state at the U.S. Capitol from Monday through Wednesday.
Facebook is working behind the scenes to help launch a new political advocacy group that would combat U.S. lawmakers and regulators trying to rein in the tech industry, escalating Silicon Valley’s war with Washington at a moment when government officials are threatening to break up large companies. The organization is called American Edge, and it aims through a barrage of advertising and other political spending to convince policymakers that Silicon Valley is essential to the U.S. economy and the future of free speech.
Amazon is hiring aggressively to meet customer demand. Traffic has soared on Facebook and YouTube. And cloud computing has become essential to home workers.
Attorney General William Barr signaled that the Justice Department plans to step up its scrutiny of Silicon Valley, exploring new legal tools to probe companies for their privacy abuses and the way they police content online.
Major U.S. nonprofits and other organizations have pledged millions of dollars toward groups trying to build a modern trust-busting movement.
Giant tech stocks have posted a remarkable year, shrugging off the trade war, bipartisan political hostility and regulatory threats.
Democrat Representative David Cicilline of Rhode Island, who leads the Judiciary Committee’s antitrust subcommittee, doesn’t just want to enforce the laws governing the tech industry. He wants to change them.
Google, Alibaba and other Big Tech companies could be forced to share data on financial services customers with banks and financial technology firms to prevent unfair competition. As Facebook’s plan for its Libra “stablecoin” faces scrutiny, a global body of regulators from the world’s main financial centers said that Big Tech’s growing tentacles raised questions for financial stability, competition and data privacy.
Researchers are creating tools to find AI-generated fake videos before they become impossible to detect. Some experts fear it is a losing battle. Above, actors were filmed in a variety of scenes. The top picture is their actual image, with a deepfake altered image below it.
High-ranking antitrust enforcers, speaking at an influential D.C. legal forum, zeroed in on big tech companies’ potential for anticompetitive behavior but also signaled they may take a broader approach to policing the industry.
