Tag: Congress

Congress made a lousy case for breaking up Big Tech

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The report also recommends requiring the FTC to collect more data and report on the state of competition in various sectors. And it says the FTC should conduct retrospectives to study whether its past decisions to approve or block mergers were correct. These kinds of studies are also long overdue and would make enforcement officials better at their jobs.

The FTC is currently engaged in a special review of every acquisition by the Big Five tech companies (those listed above, plus Microsoft) over the last decade. That process should be extended to other sectors and repeated on a regular basis.

Lastly, the report’s proposals for how to increase data portability might work very well for simple forms of data (such as a user’s social graph), which are easier to standardize. If consumers can easily take their data along with them, it will be easier for them to switch to new

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Is Tech The Next Boogie Man? Congress Would Be Better Off Focusing On Healthcare

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The House Judiciary Committee just released its antitrust report which states that Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google have become gatekeepers sitting on supra-competitive profits and unchecked, significant and durable market power. The simple question of how much do technology firms actually earn is non-trivially difficult at this point.  Partly because U.S. accou

nting rules treat research and development (R&D) and Selling, General and Administrative (SGA) outlays as expenses that depress the reported accounting return on assets (ROA). This is despite the fact that R&D and SGA increasingly contain substantial investments in intangible

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This Staggering Number Explains Why Congress Wants to Regulate Big Tech Companies. Why It Probably Won’t Work

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On Tuesday night, the House subcommittee on Antitrust, Commercial and Administrative Law of the Committee of the Judiciary released its findings after a 16-month investigation that included a hearing with the CEOs of Apple, Alphabet (the parent company of Google), Facebook, and Amazon. There’s a lot to unpack in the 450-page report, but the bottom line finding–at least according to the committee–is that each of these companies is a monopoly in its own space, and should be regulated. 

That’s quite a statement, though not entirely a surprise. Considering that members of Congress have been talking about regulating–and breaking up–big tech companies, this report is the logical conclusion of that argument. In fact, there was one number that best sums up the reason why Congress was sure to come to this point, regardless of what its investigation actually found.

The number is $138 billion, and it represents the revenue generated by

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Crypto For Congress Puts “American-Made” Bitcoin Into The Hands Of Policymakers

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This week, the Chamber of Digital Commerce PAC sent all 535 members of the United States Congress about 0.0047 BTC ($50 worth at the time), in an effort to educate the country’s legislators around cryptocurrency and blockchain technology that it calls Crypto For Congress.

Leveraging Federal Election Commission rules that allow for cryptocurrency-based campaign contributions and its own Political Action Committee to make the BTC donations, the Chamber of Digital Commerce ultimately hopes to motivate these lawmakers to embrace the advantages presented by blockchain technology.

“Our industry faces a number of regulatory challenges and it’s important for our government officials to have a working knowledge of how this technology works,” Perianne Boring, founder and president of the Chamber of Digital Commerce, told Bitcoin Magazine. “If you look at tax laws, securities laws, if you look at compliance obligations, there are a lot of examples of regulators and policymakers who

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Democrats call for Congress to rein in, break up Big Tech

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FILE – This file combination of 2019-2020 photos shows Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, Apple CEO Tim Cook, Google CEO Sundar Pichai and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. In a report issued Tuesday, Oct. 6, 2020, Democratic lawmakers called for Congress to rein in Big Tech, possibly forcing Facebook, Google, Amazon and Apple to sever their dominant platforms from their other lines of business and imposing new uniformity on the terms they offer users.

AP

WASHINGTON

Democratic lawmakers are calling for Congress to rein in Big Tech, possibly forcing Facebook, Google, Amazon and Apple to break up their businesses, while making it harder for them to acquire others and imposing new rules to safeguard competition.

The proposals in a report issued Tuesday follow a 15-month investigation by a House Judiciary Committee panel into the companies’ market dominance.

Those kinds of forced breakups through a legislative overhaul would be a radical step for

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Congress releases blockbuster tech antitrust report

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The House Judiciary Committee has released its conclusions on whether Amazon, Facebook, Apple, and Google are violating antitrust law. Its 449-page report criticizes the companies for buying competitors, preferencing their own services, and holding outsized power over smaller app developers, news publishers, and other businesses that use their platforms. Among other things, it recommends restricting future mergers and resetting the terms of US antitrust policy.



Sundar Pichai, Jeff Bezos, Tim Cook are posing for a picture

© Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge


The report was delayed amid political disagreements in Congress. The New York Times reported that Republicans split with the Democratic majority over proposed solutions to monopolistic behavior, and that they were upset the report didn’t discuss claims that tech companies discriminate against conservative users. Rep. Ken Buck (R-CO) circulated an alternative report that described some Democratic proposals as “non-starters for conservatives.” Although there’s bipartisan demand for reducing the power of the biggest tech companies, the committee failed

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Congress should rein in top US tech companies, lawmakers’ inquiry finds

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Gallery: Government battles against big businesses (Lovemoney)



a close up of a sign: While some big businesses seem to be taking over the world, their increasing global dominance has been met with resistance in some parts of the globe. Click or scroll through the governments taking on the big corporations.

Companies including Amazon, Google, Facebook, and Apple have amassed too much power and should be reined in with new legislation, US lawmakers concluded in a major report resulting from a 16-month inquiry into America’s largest tech platforms.



graphical user interface, application: Photograph: Denis Charlet/AFP/Getty Images

© Provided by The Guardian
Photograph: Denis Charlet/AFP/Getty Images

These companies “wield their dominance in ways that erode entrepreneurship, degrade Americans’ privacy online, and undermine the vibrancy of the free and diverse press,” the House judiciary committee concluded in its nearly 500-page report.

“The result is less innovation, fewer choices for consumers, and a weakened democracy.”

The report follows the committee’s lengthy inquiry into the effects of market dominance by major web platforms. That investigation saw the country’s leading tech figures – including Jeff Bezos, Tim Cook, Mark Zuckerberg, and Sundar Pichai – testify before lawmakers during historic congressional hearings in July.



graphical user interface: Lawmakers have released a nearly 500-page report after a 16-month inquiry into major tech companies.

© Photograph: Denis Charlet/AFP/Getty

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Cicilline panel calls for Congress to rein in and break up Big Tech

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WASHINGTON — Democratic lawmakers are calling for Congress to rein in Big Tech, possibly forcing Facebook, Google, Amazon and Apple to sever their dominant platforms from their other lines of business and imposing new uniformity on the terms they offer users.

The proposals in a report issued Tuesday follow a 15-month investigation by the House Judiciary Committee’s antitrust subcommittee, chaired by Rhode Island Democrat David Cicilline, into the companies’ market dominance.

Those kinds of forced breakups through a legislative overhaul would be a radical step for Congress to take toward a powerful industry. The tech giants for decades have enjoyed light-touch regulation and star status in Washington, but have come under intensifying scrutiny and derision over issues of competition, consumer privacy and hate speech.

The 450-page report offers Congress a possible roadmap for action, potentially with a new balance of political power in Congress and a new president next year.

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Congress says Facebook, Google, Amazon and Apple abused monopoly power

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Andrew Hoyle/CNET

Lawmakers from the US House of Representatives accused Facebook, Amazon, Google and Apple of “abuses of monopoly power” in a nearly 450-page report released Tuesday. The House Judiciary antitrust subcommittee drew its conclusions after a 16-month investigation that culminated in an hours-long hearing with Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Apple’s Tim Cook and Alphabet’s Sundar Pichai in July.

The report calls for several changes to rein in the companies. One recommendation tries to make it tougher for tech giants to buy up smaller companies that consolidates the industry. A “nondiscrimination requirements” suggestion aims to stop platforms from prioritizing their own products over those of rivals. The subcommittee also calls for the strengthening of antitrust laws and enforcement. 

The subcommittee likens the tech companies to monopolies

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Twitter filled with anti-Semitic tweets targeting Jewish Congress members, study says

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Twitter has rules against hate speech, but advocacy groups say the social network should do more. 


James Martin/CNET

Twitter users are posting anti-Semitic content targeting Jewish Congress members ahead of the US elections, according to a 32-page report released Tuesday by the Anti-Defamation League.

The ADL analyzed 5,954 tweets posted between July 23 to Aug. 22 directed at 30 Jewish lawmakers up for re-election. About 10% of those tweets were “problematic” because they contained anti-Semitic content. About 7% of the problematic tweets contained “explicit” anti-Semitic language such as the use of an ethnic slur, but Twitter hasn’t removed those posts, according to the ADL.

“While Twitter has taken myriad steps to deal with hate speech that violates their terms of service, they’re not identifying or removing this blatant

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