Cowbook

Jul 30, 2020

1 reply

rip armani x

Will this continue today?

rip armani x

Jul 30, 2020

Cowbook

Will this continue today?

the hearing is done, but the lawmakers can still send more questions to the tech companies for the next few days

and there might be more hearings like this in the future

rip armani x

Jul 30, 2020

Puma

!https://youtu.be/L4b-O2TKgQA

thank u poomer

Misery

Jul 30, 2020

Honestly they're so powerful it's impossible to control them

ThuggerBaby

Jul 30, 2020

edited

All this proved is that the government are full of incompetent idiots who don’t deserve a single tax dollar with how they are wasting their time talking to people with IQs far beyond anything they will ever have when they could instead be focusing on sending aid to people affected by the pandemic

Liberal politics is just spending all the time in the world talking about how you will help others instead of actually doing it

plants 🌻

Jul 30, 2020

plants

absolutely nothing will come from this

can someone confirm

Nozuka

Jul 31, 2020

Protect my mans Tim

rip armani x

Jul 31, 2020

alright yall here's the full write up. and it's added to op @ChampagneSammy @rune

JEFF BEZOS

Was mostly grilled about Amazon's position as a platform to collect data on sellers that they also compete with
Rep. Scanlon pointed to Diapers.com as an example of Amazon using their platform to undercut a competing service, corner them, then acquire their business and increase prices on consumers
Rep. Jayapal referenced a Wall Street Journal article that reported on Amazon employees using their data on 3rd party sellers to develop competing products for their Amazon-branded products
Bezos said there were policies at Amazon against employees being anti-competitive in this way, but he could NOT guarantee that they were enforced
Rep. Neguse put up evidence of Amazon engineers using data to identify growing business on AWS, before launching competing products and targeted them to their customers
Bezos denied knowledge and cited Netflix and Hulu as competitors that use AWS
Briefly mentioned Amazon acquiring Ring for market dominance and provided emails for evidence, which Bezos confirmed

"There are multiple reasons that we might buy a company... Sometimes we are trying to buy some technology or IP. Sometimes it is a talent aquisition. But most times it is for market position." - Jeff Bezos

Other thing they questioned him on was the amount of stolen and counterfeit products on Amazon. Bezos denied knowing whether sellers needed to provide a name, address and phone number before users could sell products on the platform

rip armani x

Jul 31, 2020

edited

MARK ZUCKERBERG

Came out swinging took shots at all the other CEOs in his opening remarks

"In many areas, we are behind our competitors... The most popular messaging service in the U.S. is iMessage. The fastest growing app is TikTok. The most popular app for video is YouTube. The fastest growing ads platform is Amazon. The largest ads platform is Google. And for every dollar spent on advertising in the U.S., less than ten cents is spent with us."

Was questioned about Facebook's impact on election security and their role in spreading disinformation and hate speech
Confirmed that there was a program at Facebook that paid teenagers for access to their personal data
They focused on Facebook's acquisition of smaller startups like Instagram and WhatsApp, arguing that they wanted to increase their market position as well as neutralize competition

“… Facebook saw Instagram as a powerful threat that could siphon business away from Facebook so rather than compete with it, Facebook bought it... This is exactly the same kind of anti-competitive action that the antitrust laws were designed to prevent.” - Jim Sensenbrenner

Admitted to copying ideas from competitors
Jayapal questioned if Facebook had ever threatened founders to clone their products while also attempting to acquire their company, which Zuckerberg denied
Zuckerberg argued that it was well known that Facebook would compete with Snapchat and Instagram, so his messages to founders about copying their features were not "threats"
She brought out receipts of Instagram founder Kevin Systrom being shook that Mark would go DESTROY MODE if they didn't sell
They even exposed emails of him talking about buying Google

rip armani x

Jul 31, 2020

SUNDAR PICHAI

The Chairman David Cicilline accused Google of diverting competitors' traffic from Google Search to their own services and of stealing content. And shouted out Genius
Accused Google of monitoring competitors' web traffic data and using it to develop their own services, which Sundar would NOT deny
Presented memos of Google engineers discussing websites receiving "too much traffic"
The committee highlighted Google's purchase of Advertising Giant DoubleClick, and their promise from 2007 to never combine Google user data with DoubleClick data which they eventually did in 2016
Val Demings BULLIED this man, gave a pretty excellent argument for what she described as abuse of Google's market power

“… Google’s bait and switch with DoubleClick is part of a broader pattern where Google buys up companies for the purposes of surveilling Americans and because of Google’s dominance users have no choice but to surrender.” - Val Demings

Basically she argued that by harvesting users' browsing data from DoubleClick and using it with Google's user data from search, Gmail, Maps, etc., Google had essentially ended privacy on the internet
Sundar argued that Google had introduced a number of features for users to control their private data

rip armani x

Jul 31, 2020

TIM COOK

Received the fewest questions, about half as much as everyone else
Like Jeff Bezos, was mostly asked about The App Store's position as a platform while also competing with third party businesses on the same platform
Rep. Johnson argued that App Store review rules are not available to developers and were arbitrarily enforced, questioned what would stop Apple from increasing their commission on developers
Tim Cook argued there were many different smartphone manufacturers and operating systems competing for developers, compared the situation to a street fight for market share
They brought up Screen Time apps that Apple had removed from the App Store in 2018, after releasing their own similar app and promoting it to their users
Tim Cook argued that Apple had removed the apps because of privacy and security concerns, not anti-competitive reasons
Rep. Lucy McBath provided RECEIPTS of Apple blocking publisher Random House from releasing their own eBook marketplace on the App Store so they would have to use Apple's own iBook store
They showed evidence of Apple seemingly enforcing their own rules differently for different developers. Also of them apparently not following their own rules, after Tim Cook testified that they treat all developers the same. Which showed that he was possibly lying
Also said that he "could not read" the evidence they gave

let me know if yall want the timestamps

sace 👍

Jul 31, 2020

1 reply

thanks for all that quick summaries! @op

rip armani x

Jul 31, 2020

edited

👇 REACTIONS 👇

Some congresspeople actually did their job and asked tough questions about Big Tech's monopolistic practices

mashable.com/article/biggest-moments-from-big-tech-anti-trust-hearing

As a hearing on antitrust law, it was a historic moment of reckoning with the most powerful companies and people the modern world has ever known

Tech competitors are ‘blown away’ by Congress’ CEO grilling and hopeful for antitrust reform

cnbc.com/2020/07/31/big-tech-competitors-were-blown-away-by-house-antitrust-ceo-hearing.html

Three competitors who have spoken out said the hearing largely succeeded in showing something is wrong in monopolistic digital markets

Big Tech’s Power Comes Under Fire at Congressional Antitrust Hearing

wsj.com/articles/tech-ceos-defend-operations-ahead-of-congressional-hearing-11596027626

The chief executives of Amazon, Facebook, Apple and Alphabet faced relentless criticism at a congressional hearing Wednesday, with Democrats and Republicans alike challenging their business practices over more than five contentious hours

Congress has the goods on Apple, Amazon, Facebook and Google

cnbc.com/2020/07/30/apple-amazon-facebook-google-internal-emails-released-by-congress.html

The House antitrust subcommittee released a trove of documents after the hearing that provide a clearer picture of the four tech giants’ approach to competition as they grew into major forces of the global economy over the last decade