Amid controversy over podcaster Joe Rogan’s controversial COVID-19 episodes and some past episodes that contained racial slurs, one video streaming platform is lending Rogan their support.
“We stand with you, your guests, and you legion of fans in desire for real conversation,” Rumble CEO Chris Pavlovski said in a letter addressed to Rogan. “So we’d like to offer you 100 million reasons to make the world a better place.”
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A new report from Victims of Communism gives several American tech companies a failing grade for their “complicity” with China and its human rights violations, an ongoing controversy for tech companies which often rely on the nation’s cheaper labor and large market to pad their profits.
The report examines Amazon, Apple, Dell, Facebook, GE, Google, Intel, and Microsoft on a range of issues, including to what degree they partner with China’s surveillance state and human rights violations.
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It’s no secret that local newspapers have been dying. Since 2004, the United States has lost a quarter of its newspapers — 70 dailies and over 2,000 weeklies. This has been devastating for communities across the country who depend on these newspapers to stay informed and engaged. There are many factors causing this decline, but one of the main culprits, especially as of late, has been Big Tech.
There’s a term to describe the actions of massive corporations manipulating the levers of state power to dominate their markets and pad their bottom lines at the expense of others. It’s crony capitalism. Under this system, crony capitalists flood Washington, DC with campaign contributions, pay-to-play experts, and legions of lobbyists to shape the laws and regulations that govern their industries.
Sound familiar? If you have observed Big Tech’s movements within the halls of power in our nation’s capital over the past decade, you know exactly what I’m talking about. It’s said that if you whisper “Section 230” to yourself three times while walking through the Capitol, a Big Tech-funded lobbyist will suddenly appear to explain why changing even one word in the arcane law might trigger the apocalypse.
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After GoFundMe banned Canada’s Freedom Convoy of truckers from using its service, CloutHub has stepped in to fill the void.
“There is no more important movement for freedom across the American continent right now than the Freedom Convoy 2022,” CloutHub founder Jeff Brain said in a press release. “We are proud to support the Canadian Truckers and will help support the other Trucker movements popping up around the world to fight against unlawful mandates. CloutHub is where the world connects and organizes to take on the issues they care about, including defending liberty and freedom.”
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Sen. Amy Klobuchar appeared on Fox News’ Special Report Thursday night, primarily to promote an antitrust bill aimed at reforming laws that govern Big Tech and increasing competition.
A bipartisan U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee voted 16-6 Thursday to advance the legislation — The American Innovation and Choice Online Act — as bipartisan lawmakers seek to curtail the power and influence of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, and others.
In short, the bill would prevent companies from “unfairly preferencing their own products and services” on their platforms while prohibiting “specific forms of conduct that are harmful to small businesses, entrepreneurs, and consumers.”
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Amazon and Google are lobbying small businesses who use their services to oppose antitrust bills aimed at breaking up major tech companies, enlisting them to pressure lawmakers, Politico reported.
The companies are conducting a public relations campaign in an effort to drum up opposition to antitrust legislation proposed in the Senate, including a bill sponsored by Republican Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley and Democratic Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar that goes after companies like Amazon and Google for prioritizing their own services in online shopping platforms, according to Politico.
The tech giants are using email campaigns, Zoom calls and online petitions, to spread the message that the bills would harm small businesses that rely on their platforms, Politico reported. Several technology trade groups, including the Connected Commerce Council, are also working to encourage small businesses to oppose the legislation.
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Prominent personalities including podcast host Joe Rogan and Republican Sen. Rand Paul have announced plans to leave major social media platforms amid growing backlash over censorship.
Rogan announced late Sunday that he had started an account on alternative social media site Gettr, posting remarks critical of Twitter on the platform.
“Just in case shit over at Twitter gets even dumber, I’m here now as well,” Rogan wrote. “Rejoice!”
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Democratic state lawmakers are proposing laws to curb “misinformation” on social media sites and other online platforms, mirroring efforts by Democrats in Congress.
New York state Sen. Brad Hoylman announced a bill on Monday aimed at reducing the spread of misinformation and harmful content online.
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Ohio Republican Rep. Jim Jordan is the most likely candidate to take over the House Judiciary Committee if the GOP wins back Congress next year. Ask him what he wants to investigate and who he wants to subpoena, and he doesn’t hesitate. Not even for even a second.
“Fauci,” he told Just the News, referring to Dr. Anthony Fauci, the U.S. infectious disease specialist overseeing America’s pandemic response.
While the many conflicting messages and reversals of the pandemic response are ripe for investigation, Republicans like Jordan also want to press Fauci about why America was funding China’s bat research on coronaviruses at the Wuhan Institute of Virology through a U.S. nonprofit called EcoHealth Alliance and why NIH revived a dangerous form of experimentation known as gain of function in 2017.
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Republicans are more likely than Democrats to back certain reforms targeting major tech companies like Amazon, Google and Apple, including a key bipartisan antitrust bill, according to a new poll.
There is a bipartisan consensus among voters in Republican-heavy Iowa to update legislation to hold tech companies accountable, though more Republicans than Democrats back measures curbing abuses of power by large technology firms and strengthening laws to keep markets competitive, according to the results of a poll by Data For Progress shared exclusively with the Daily Caller News Foundation.
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An expert on the Communist Chinese Party (CCP) who chronicles China’s current affairs reacted Wednesday to a damning report that Apple CEO Tim Cook paid the Chinese government $275 billion to curry favor with President Xi Jinping.
Simone Gao is a Chinese-born filmmaker and an award-winning reporter.
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While there is agreement between large factions of both Republicans and Democrats that social media companies should be liable for certain third-party content hosted on their platforms, the parties differ on what that content should be, and why platforms should be liable in the first place.
Congress appeared no closer to finding common ground following a House Energy and Commerce hearing Wednesday, in which lawmakers considered several bills seeking to reform Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act.
“Wednesday’s hearing made clear that Republicans and Democrats have drastically different solutions to hold Big Tech accountable,” Republican Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, who serves as Ranking Member on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “Republicans are fighting for free speech, while Democrats continue to push for more censorship and control. Bipartisanship will not be possible until Democrats agree that we need less censorship, not more.”
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President Biden “lied” on the campaign trail “when he said that he knew nothing about his son Hunter’s overseas business dealings,” alleges Miranda Devine, author of “Laptop from Hell: Hunter Biden, Big Tech, and the Dirty Secrets the President Tried to Hide.”
Biden “met Hunter’s business partners from overseas multiple times” when he was vice president, including “Mexicans and Ukrainians and Russians and Chinese and Kazakhstanis,” Devine told the John Solomon Reports podcast on Thursday.
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Republican lawmakers are raising concerns that Twitter’s new Chief Executive Parag Agrawal may threaten conservative political speech on the social media platform.
Agrawal, Twitter’s former chief technology officer who was announced as CEO following Jack Dorsey’s decision to step down early Monday, has previously highlighted the perceived threat of online “misinformation,” calling to depart from free speech considerations in favor of other concerns in an interview with MIT Technology Review in November 2020.
“Our role is not to be bound by the First Amendment, but our role is to serve a healthy public conversation and our moves are reflective of things that we believe lead to a healthier public conversation,” Agrawal said. “The kinds of things that we do about this is, focus less on thinking about free speech, but thinking about how the times have changed.”
Agrawal previously oversaw development efforts on Bluesky, a decentralized social media platform intended to “better control abusive and misleading information.”
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Tech giant Samsung is poised to announce a $17 billion investment in a semiconductor manufacturing plant located in Taylor, Texas.
The facility is estimated to create 1,800 jobs and will begin producing computer chips at the end of 2024, according to The Wall Street Journal, who first reported the investment. The city of Taylor offered Samsung substantial tax breaks to choose it for the plant’s location, the WSJ reported.
Samsung did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment. A Samsung spokeswoman told the WSJ that “a final decision has not yet been made regarding the location” of the chip facility.
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After Kyle Rittenhouse was found not guilty on all charges Friday stemming from his self-defense killing of two rioters and the injury of a third in August of 2020, a crowdfunding platform explained its decision to ban him raising money for his legal defense.
“GoFundMe’s Terms of Service prohibit raising money for the legal defense of an alleged violent crime,” GoFundMe, a popular online crowdfunding tool, said.
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As bipartisan legislation reining in major tech companies moves closer to becoming law, Republicans are pushing the boundaries of their alliance with Democrats.
Republican Rep. Ken Buck and Democratic Rep. David Cicilline, the architects behind six antitrust bills targeting Big Tech that advanced out of the House Judiciary Committee in June, introduced a bill Tuesday requiring online platforms to provide a version of their services without personalized recommendation algorithms. The bill is a companion to legislation led by Republican Sen. John Thune and co-sponsored by several Democratic senators including Richard Blumenthal, who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee.
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Senate Commerce Republicans are whipping opposition to the nomination of Gigi Sohn, one of President Joe Biden’s picks for the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).
Biden nominated Sohn, former FCC counsel under Tom Wheeler and Ford Foundation alum, to an empty spot on the commission in late October, along with current acting Chair Jessica Rosenworcel to the permanent position.
While Republicans have been quiet in their response to the nomination of Rosenworcel, many are pointing to Sohn’s public statements on conservatives as reasons to oppose her confirmation.
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Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates has called for a “new way of doing the vaccines” against viruses like COVID-19 given that they do not “block” transmission.
Gates said the “economic damage” and death toll from COVID-19 was “completely horrific.”
Gates expects the world’s experience with COVID-19 to lead to larger research and development budgets to better prepare for a future pandemic.
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Republican Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton and Democratic Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar unveiled a bipartisan bill Friday intended to restrict how major tech companies acquire and merge with smaller firms.
The bill, titled the Platform Competition and Opportunity Act, is a companion to antitrust legislation advanced out of the House Judiciary Committee in June. If enacted, the law would shift the burden in antitrust cases to the acquiring party for mergers greater than $50 million, meaning that the acquiring firm would have to prove that its acquisition of another company was not anti-competitive.
The bill explicitly targets Big Tech companies, and it applies to firms with market capitalizations over $600 billion, at least 50,000,000 U.S.-based monthly active users or 100,000 monthly active business users. This would include Amazon, Google, Facebook and Apple.
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Several immigration provisions tucked inside the Democrats’ spending bill are set to greatly expand the number of legal, high-skilled immigrants admitted to the U.S., handing large tech companies a major victory.
The provisions, included in the $1.75 trillion Build Back Better Act, propose a number of changes to the immigration system intended to help relieve the green card backlog and admit more immigrants. The bill proposes “recapturing” green cards that were authorized but never actually issued due to administrative complications, as well as exempting visa applicants from numerical and country limits if the applicants pay a fee.
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We are a year overdue for the true story of the 2020 elections. Mollie Hemingway has at last delivered it to us in one tidy volume.
It’s a complex story, which makes for a weighty book. The research is thorough, the writing is evidentiary, the style is clinical—like investigative journalism and social science used to be. The endnotes alone run nearly 100 pages.
Reading Rigged, one isn’t jarred by hyperbole, conjecture, or spin. Hemingway is unequivocal on progressive malice, yet she can be scathing of Republicans, too. She is particularly critical of Rudy Giuliani’s attempts to publicize fraud nationally, thereby undermining prior case-by-case efforts to get particular state courts to recognize particular violations of particular state laws.
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With the democratization of information, we are witnessing an immensely beneficial development for every American. This development is best recognized by the fascistic attempts of Big Tech, the Pravda media, and the Biden Administration to destroy it.
As many have noted, social media has empowered individuals to pursue their happiness and shape their destinies to an extent unimagined in human history. While many are more familiar with the economic and social aspects of the internet (hence, the term “social media”), it is the political dimension that most frightens the Left.
Given their perpetually failed, morally bankrupt, coercive agenda, the democratization of information is an existential threat for the Left and to its psychotic aim to “fundamentally transform” the most prosperous, powerful, and equitable nation ever known.
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Facebook lobbyists are struggling to meet with lawmakers, Politico reported, as the tech giant faces congressional scrutiny and negative press surrounding its business practices.
Several lawmakers’ offices are ignoring Facebook’s policy team and even refusing to meet with lobbyists, Politico reported. Several congressional aides told the outlet that recent news reports on Facebook’s business practices, including its knowledge of how its platform affects teen users and its amplification of “misinformation,” have contributed to lawmakers’ hostile attitudes.
“Mark Zuckerberg has done more to polarize the country probably than anyone else and yet despite that, the antipathy towards him is one of the most bipartisan things that remains in the country,” a Democratic House staffer told Politico.
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On Thursday, two of the biggest tech companies in the world posted earnings that fell below market expectations, attributed to the ongoing supply chain crisis that is paralyzing the American economy, according to CNN.
For the third quarter of 2021, Amazon’s net sales amounted to around $110.8 billion, which was a 15 percent increase from the previous year; however, this ultimately fell below market analyst predictions of about $111.6 billion. Amazon’s overall net income for the same period decreased from the same period in 2020 to about $3.2 billion, when predictions estimated around $4.6 billion.
Apple’s sales during the same quarter were $83.4 billion, with iPhone sales at $38.9 billion; both were lower than original projections.
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As U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland sat down for his first hearing before the House Judiciary Committee, denying a conflict of interest in his decision to investigate parents for “domestic terrorism,” there is a mother in the quiet suburb of Annandale, N.J., who found his answers lacking. And she has questions she wants asked at Garland’s hearing with the Senate Judiciary Committee this Wednesday.
On a recent Saturday night, Caroline Licwinko, a mother of three, a law school student and the coach to her daughter’s cheerleading squad, sat in front of her laptop and tapped three words into an internet search engine: “Panorama. Survey. Results.”
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A new report reveals that multiple private grants tied to the Big Tech giant Facebook overwhelmingly backed Democratic candidates and counties in the state of Pennsylvania in 2020, as reported by the New York Post.
The report by the publication Broad + Liberty (BL) reveals that one such grant, the Center for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL), spent more money on turning out registered voters in Democrat-majority counties than Republican-majority counties. In addition to the increased push for voter turnout, these counties were given a jumpstart on this grant and information on how to apply by state officials.
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The same group of Russian hackers behind the December 2020 SolarWinds attack are targeting companies in the U.S. technology supply chain, according to a Monday report released by Microsoft.
Russian hacking group Nobelium is targeting cloud infrastructure companies and information technology software resellers in an attempt to gain access to these companies’ customers, according to Microsoft’s research. Microsoft believes Nobelium to be the same group responsible for the SolarWinds hack in late 2020 that affected multiple Cabinet-level agencies, federal contractors and critical infrastructure companies.
“This recent activity is another indicator that Russia is trying to gain long-term, systematic access to a variety of points in the technology supply chain and establish a mechanism for surveilling – now or in the future – targets of interest to the Russian government,” Tom Burt, Microsoft’s vice president for customer security and trust, wrote in the report.
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Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey stirred up more fears around inflation with his comments over the weekend saying that hyperinflation is “happening.”
“Hyperinflation is going to change everything,” the tech leader posted on Twitter. “It’s happening.”
The post sparked a flurry of responses. Replying to comments on his post, Dorsey added, “It will happen in the US soon, and so the world.”
Hyperinflation is defined by Investopedia as “rapid, excessive, and out-of-control general price increases in an economy.”
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Two Pennsylvania state senators said recently they want to hold social media companies accountable for religious or political censorship.
Sens. Doug Mastriano, R-Gettysburg, and Scott Hutchinson, R-Oil City, said their Senate Bill 604, also called the Social Media Accountability Act, would create a private right of action to allow residents to sue social media companies like Facebook, Youtube and Twitter for banning or censoring their account due to sharing religious or political beliefs on the platform.
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The red state/blue state dichotomy is not simple.
Nowhere is that more apparent than Tennessee where—despite having one of the most conservative electorates in the country—the leadership has been passive at best in responding to the wishes of their supporters during these days of great crisis.
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Peter Schweizer, author of the 2011 book “Throw Them All Out,” said it’s still “very hard” to prove a member of Congress has engaged in insider trading despite the passage of the STOCK Act almost 10 years ago.
Schweizer called on Congress to ban lawmakers from buying and selling individual stocks.
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Another former Facebook employee filed a whistleblower complaint Friday with the Securities and Exchange Commission alleging that the tech giant misled its investors by failing to combat the spread of hate and misinformation on its platform, The Washington Post reported.
The former employee, whose name is not yet public, alleged that Facebook executives chose not to pursue adequate content moderation policies related to hate speech and misinformation for the sake of maximizing profits. The complaint also alleges that Facebook did not do enough about alleged Russian misinformation on the platform for fear of upsetting former President Donald Trump.
In particular, the complaint alleges that Trump and his associates received preferential treatment, according to the Post.
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The majority of Americans believe the threat of the coronavirus is getting less serious, and a plurality believe President Joe Biden and government health officials like Dr. Anthony Fauci don’t want lockdowns to end, according to a new poll conducted by the Convention of States Action in partnership with The Trafalgar Group.
“Despite the fact that Big Media and Big Tech are working tirelessly to suppress the truth, this poll reveals that most Americans aren’t fooled in the least,” Mark Meckler, president of Convention of States Action, said. “They clearly see that the pandemic is on a downward trend, and they also understand that President Biden and Dr. Fauci have no intention of easing restrictions and mandates,””
According to the poll, 63.1% of likely voters believe the threat of the coronavirus is getting less serious, with 25.9% saying it’s much less serious, compared to 26.1% who say it’s getting more serious. Nearly 11% said they weren’t sure.
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Twitter flagged a tweet from Republican Rep. Jim Banks sent out on Oct. 19 calling Dr. Rachel Levine, who is transgender, a man, the Daily Caller News Foundation has learned.
“The title of the first female four-star officer gets taken by a man,” Banks said in a now-locked tweet, in reference to Levine getting sworn in as a four-star admiral to the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps on Tuesday.
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Major tech companies are continuing to require their employees to be vaccinated at their Texas facilities, in violation of Gov. Greg Abbott’s executive order banning all vaccine mandates.
Abbott signed an executive order on Oct. 11 prohibiting “any entity,” including private businesses, government contractors and local schools, from imposing a requirement that employees be vaccinated as a condition of employment. However, Google, Facebook, HPE, Twitter and Lyft have yet to lift their vaccine mandates in response to the order, Protocol first reported.
HPE spokesman Adam Bauer confirmed the company had not changed its vaccine policy, and told the Daily Caller News Foundation that the company was making “vaccination a condition of employment for U.S. team members to comply with President Biden’s executive order and remain in good standing as a federal contractor.”
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Top lawmakers in the House Judiciary antitrust subcommittee met with Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen on Thursday, a person familiar with the matter confirmed to the Daily Caller News Foundation.
Democratic Rep. David Cicilline, who chairs the subcommittee, and Republican Rep. Ken Buck, who serves as ranking member, held a meeting with Haugen to discuss Facebook and issues related to social media competition, Politico first reported, citing two sources. A person familiar with the matter confirmed the meeting to the DCNF, and said the lawmakers also discussed potential antitrust reforms, as well as matters related to privacy and social media algorithms.
Buck and Cicilline worked together to advance a series of antitrust bills targeting major tech companies out of the House Judiciary Committee in June, and have both advocated for breaking up Facebook and other large platforms. The antitrust bills are currently set to reach the House floor in November.
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A bipartisan group of senators will introduce legislation Thursday designed to prevent large technology platforms like Amazon and Google from giving their own services preferential treatment.
The bill, titled the American Choice and Innovation Online Act, accompanies legislation of the same name advanced through the House Judiciary Committee in June, and it seeks to prevent “discriminatory” conduct by major online platforms, according to multiple reports. The bill is sponsored by Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, who chairs the Senate Judiciary subcommittee on antitrust issues, and Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, who serves as Ranking Member on the Senate Judiciary Committee.
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Social justice groups are up in arms Thursday over what they have labeled “anti-transgender” bigotry from comedian Dave Chappelle, who recently released a new Netflix special called “The Closer.”
In part of his standup routine, he discusses cancel culture, and how author J.K. Rowling was “cancelled” for an essay she wrote defending the idea of biological sex. For that, she was labeled a “Trans-exclusionary Radical Feminist” (TERF).
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Parents who protest public school policies on race, gender and COVID-19 are crying foul after Attorney General Merrick Garland promised to “discourage” and prosecute “harassment, intimidation, and threats of violence” against school boards, administrators, teachers and staff.
His “mobilization of [the] FBI against parents is consistent with the complete weaponization of the federal government against ideological opponents,” Rhode Island mother Nicole Solas, who is waging a public records battle with her school district over race-related curriculum, told Just the News.
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Two conservative tech advocacy groups sent a letter to House lawmakers criticizing former national security officials for attempting to prevent the passage of antitrust bills targeting Big Tech.
The letter, sent by the Internet Accountability Project (IAP) and the American Principles Project (APP) to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy along with lawmakers responsible for overseeing antitrust legislation, urged Congress to pass six bills targeting major tech companies advanced beyond the House Judiciary Committee in June. The letter also criticized twelve former intelligence officials who sent a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy arguing against the passage of antitrust bills in mid-September.
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YouTube deleted one of former Texas Rep. Ron Paul’s channels Thursday and denied his appeal to reinstate it, only restoring the account after Paul voiced his frustrations on Twitter.
Paul posted two screenshots on Twitter Thursday of emails sent to him by YouTube informing him his account “RonPaulInstitute” had been removed for “severe or repeated violations of our community guidelines.” A screenshot of another email appeared to show an automatic reply from YouTube informing Paul that his appeal to reinstate the account had been denied.
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Facebook researched how to market its products and services to preteen users, studying kids’ playdates and developing strategies to address parents’ concerns, according to an investigation by The Wall Street Journal.
The tech giant established a three-year project beginning in 2018 to study and develop marketing strategies geared towards preteen users, company documents seen by The Wall Street Journal revealed. Facebook conducted over a dozen studies to figure out which services most appeal to children under the age of 13, and what are parents’ chief concerns.
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It is inarguable that by financially crippling, socially segregating, and digitally banishing politically irksome people and enterprises, the big tech cartel is flouting the spirit, if not the strict letter, of the Civil Rights Act.
For how do you make a living if your banking options increasingly are curtailed and constantly threatened, and your ability to electronically communicate with clients is likewise circumscribed?
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Almost nine in ten voters are very concerned about the impact social media is having on children, according to a new poll.
When asked whether they were “very nervous about the effects social media is having on kids today,” 84% of registered voters said they at least somewhat agreed, according to the results of a poll conducted by Benenson Strategy Group and released Thursday by the Future of Tech Commission. Roughly 6 out of 10 parents polled agreed that they felt like they had no control over what their children see online, while 85% of voters overall supported special online privacy measures for children.
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An internal memo published by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Thursday detailed Chairwoman Lina Khan’s vision for antitrust enforcement, including plans to target several of Big Tech’s business practices.
The memo, sent to FTC commissioners and staff, titled “Vision and Priorities for the FTC,” outlined several key antitrust enforcement areas Khan sought to prioritize, including addressing “root causes” of monopolies, considering the harm of anticompetitive conduct on workers and other businesses, and focusing on “next-generation technologies.” Although Khan did not identify any of the major tech companies by name, she highlighted several allegedly anti-competitive business practices that have been the subject of tech antitrust litigation.
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Facebook released its updated Content Distribution Guidelines on Thursday, shedding more light on how the tech giant decides what content it suppresses.
While Facebook has previously provided some details on the types of content that receive reduced distribution in Facebook’s News Feed, the updated guidelines are designed to provide clarity and accessibility, Director of Product Management Anna Stepanov announced in a blog post Thursday.
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A bipartisan group of 32 state attorneys general sent a letter to leading lawmakers in the House and Senate on Monday urging the passage of a series of antitrust bills targeting major technology companies.
The letter, led by attorneys general Phil Weiser of Colorado, Douglas Peterson of Nebraska, Letitia James of New York, and Herbert H. Slatery III of Tennessee, was addressed to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. The attorneys general urged Congress to modernize federal antitrust laws and enhance consumer protections by passing a series of bills introduced in the House Judiciary Committee in June that target big tech companies.
“A comprehensive update of federal antitrust laws has not occurred in decades,” the attorneys general wrote. “The sponsors of these bills should be commended for working to ensure that federal antitrust laws remain robust and keep pace with that of modern markets.”
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This week the Wall Street Journal unveiled “The Facebook Files” – an investigative series based on leaked internal Facebook materials that offer an unvarnished look at how the social media giant sees its platform and its impact on society. A central theme of the reporting is the degree to which Facebook’s own research is at odds with its public statements, and that internally it has recognized the harms the platform causes for society even while publicly touting its benefits.
The Journal’s reporting raises myriad concerns over the state of social platforms generally today, from Instagram’s toxic influence on teenage girls to the impact of algorithmic changes on political discourse to how Facebook secretly shields influential users from its content moderation rules.
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A warning by former national security officials about the dangers of regulating technology companies is in lockstep with arguments made by Big Tech chief executives, according to a report from an internet watchdog group.
A group of former intelligence community officials sent a letter Wednesday to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy arguing against the passage of a series of antitrust bills advanced in the House Judiciary Committee in June. The warnings echo talking points made by groups lobbying for the tech industry and major tech firms themselves, according to a report by the Internet Accountability Project, a nonprofit conservative advocacy group focused on issues related to Big Tech.
The intelligence community officials argued the bills would make the U.S. less competitive with China and could even compromise America’s national security.
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