🐱 Trump administration 'taking a look' at regulating Google

http://thehill.com/policy/technolog...nistration-taking-a-look-at-regulating-google


White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow on Tuesday said that the administration is “taking a look” at potentially regulating Google, following President Trump’s tweets criticizing the search giant.

Trump tweeted on Tuesday morning that Google search results for “Trump News” showed results for “only the viewing/reporting of Fake New Media," he wrote, referencing prominent news outlet CNN.



“Republican/Conservative & Fair Media is shut out,” Trump’s tweet read.
Kudlow's comments were in response to being pressed by reporters on if, in light of the president's comments, the administration is considering imposing regulations on Google.

In his tweets, Trump went on to accuse Google and other tech companies of being biased against conservatives, an increasingly common attack from Republicans.

“Google & others are suppressing voices of Conservatives and hiding information and news that is good. They are controlling what we can & cannot see. This is a very serious situation-will be addressed!” Trump tweeted.

Google shot back at the president's claims, refuting charges that it is biased against conservatives or any other political groups.

"When users type queries into the Google Search bar, our goal is to make sure they receive the most relevant answers in a matter of seconds," a Google spokesperson said in a statement.

"Search is not used to set a political agenda and we don't bias our results toward any political ideology," the statement continues. "Every year, we issue hundreds of improvements to our algorithms to ensure they surface high-quality content in response to users' queries. We continually work to improve Google Search and we never rank search results to manipulate political sentiment."

Trump joins high-profile Republicans like House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) in accusing technology companies of treating conservatives on their platforms unfairly.

With support from McCarthy, the House Energy and Commerce Committee is set to hold a hearing on the matter on Sept. 5, which Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey is set to testify.

Dorsey will also testify during the Senate Intelligence Committee’s hearing that day on how foreign governments have run misinformation campaigns on American tech platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Google Plus.

 

[Your Weird Fetish]

Seems like both google and mastercard ought to face some kind of punishment for that.

 

[Medicated]

Damn, maybe Trump really does need to look at Google.



TLDR : Bloomberg is reporting that Google secretly paid Mastercard millions of dollars for their cardholders' shopping data.

Well it depends if anyone has the balls to go after two multi billion dollar companies that, probably under scrutiny, will reveal several other billion dollar companies doing the same thing.

 

[Krokodil Overdose]

Raw number of users is a pretty shallow metric. The value of individual eyeballs (one eyed people being worth half as much) is much higher on different platforms, depending on what you're trying to do with them.

Medium has much richer political content and its readers know this. Instagram has the biggest collection of dumb young adult girls, I guess. Twitter hits above its weight class in a few areas.

With a limited advertising budget, facebook would not be my top choice unless I had the most generic product imaginable.

But it is the choice of enough people to give Facebook market capitalization to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars. I'm not saying the market is smart- it thought that Enron and Theranos were good bets, after all- but when you have that much concentrated power and control in the hands of a service that's that ubiquitous, operating with that little accountability, it's ripe for abuse- as we've seen. "Quantity has a quality all it's own," to quote Mao.

(BTW, cloudflare is great. They protect so many sites that they're effectively unboycottable. They have a very strong free speech policy that basically amounts to passing the buck and letting the client handle their legals themselves.)

I hate that that kind of setup is necessary, and I do think something should be done to keep it from being necessary.

Cloudflare IS great, right up until their CEO wakes up on the wrong side of the bed and decides to delete you from the internet. Then, weirdly enough, it turns out none of their policies are actually binding and you don't have any recourse against de facto monopoly power being weaponized against you. This is a a recurring problem, and doing something to keep it from being necessary is what I've been pushing for this whole time.

For these very reasons, I do support more restrictions (or perhaps enforcing the ones we already have) on providers of infrastructure. I think that because infrastructure, as well as financial services, is much harder to establish than software, there should be some regulations. Infrastructure is the real public sidewalk to me.

In fact, there's the CDA section 230. The government should start wrecking hosting services that choose to pry into what their hosts do.

We're in agreement here (I mentioned the CDA thing a couple posts back.) It looks like we're just drawing the line in different places as to who precisely needs an FTC colonoscopy.

That could become an issue at some point.

I think this is the core of our disagreement, TBH. You're looking at it from a tech angle while I'm looking at it from an econ angle.

 

[Marvin]

Cloudflare IS great, right up until their CEO wakes up on the wrong side of the bed and decides to delete you from the internet. Then, weirdly enough, it turns out none of their policies are actually binding and you don't have any recourse against de facto monopoly power being weaponized against you. This is a a recurring problem, and doing something to keep it from being necessary is what I've been pushing for this whole time.

The article is misrepresenting the situation.

The Daily Stormer was claiming that Cloudflare / Matthew Prince were actually supporting their message and their site.

He was entirely within his rights to terminate their service. I mean, if he sued them for defamation and shut them down that way, it'd be the same thing in my opinion.

 

[Krokodil Overdose]

The article is misrepresenting the situation.

The Daily Stormer was claiming that Cloudflare / Matthew Prince were actually supporting their message and their site.

He was entirely within his rights to terminate their service. I mean, if he sued them for defamation and shut them down that way, it'd be the same thing in my opinion.

Do you have a link for that? I followed the situation pretty closely while it was happening, and I don't remember anything like that happening. (Besides, Anglin making ludicrously OTT claims is par for the course- see his post on moving to Algeria when they moved to a .al server. I doubt that Prince would have won that lawsuit, given the reasonable man test.)

E: Even if that's true, though, I don't see how that affects CloudFlare's obligations to a paying client. Is there something in their ToS about how they reserve the right to pull your service at any time if you're a jerk and claim they support you?

 

[Marvin]

Do you have a link for that? I followed the situation pretty closely while it was happening, and I don't remember anything like that happening. (Besides, Anglin making ludicrously OTT claims is par for the course- see his post on moving to Algeria when they moved to a .al server. I doubt that Prince would have won that lawsuit, given the reasonable man test.)

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/08/16/cloudflare_ceo_daily_stormer/ (btw that sub headline is obnoxious as fuck)

Legals aside, if you're specifically trying to implicate a service provider in your stupid shit, I think you've reasonably crossed a line. Treat your service providers as mercenaries.

 

[Krokodil Overdose]

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/08/16/cloudflare_ceo_daily_stormer/ (btw that sub headline is obnoxious as fuck)

Legals aside, if you're specifically trying to implicate a service provider in your stupid shit, I think you've reasonably crossed a line.

The Daily Stormer "team," AFAIK, is Anglin and Weev. Hell, Prince spent virtually his entire statement on Daily Stormer spelling out just the ridiculous amount of power they wield over internet infrastructure and how few limitations they have for exercising it. Common carrier regulations would be almost be a favor to him at this point so he could reasonably launder his support for free speech against the screeching mobs. Again: how much control do these companies have to be able to exercise over the public square before we admit there's a problem?

Treat your service providers as mercenaries.

They work for you as long as you pay their fee and don't get out-bid by someone else? That doesn't apply here.

 

[Steve Mayers]

If they want to regulate Google for "media bias" than all media forms need to be regulated for "bias". Talk radio isn't regulated and it's largely right wing.

 

[Krokodil Overdose]

If they want to regulate Google for "media bias" than all media forms need to be regulated for "bias". Talk radio isn't regulated and it's largely right wing.

When Rush Limbaugh claims safe harbor due to being a platform, not a publisher, we can revisit this.

 

[Marvin]

The Daily Stormer "team," AFAIK, is Anglin and Weev. Hell, Prince spent virtually his entire statement on Daily Stormer spelling out just the ridiculous amount of power they wield over internet infrastructure and how few limitations they have for exercising it. Common carrier regulations would be almost be a favor to him at this point so he could reasonably launder his support for free speech against the screeching mobs. Again: how much control do these companies have to be able to exercise over the public square before we admit there's a problem?

I think we got off the rails with cloudflare discussion.

Cloudflare is infrastructure which should be reasonably regulated. Facebook is a platform and they have a first amendment right to regulate who they host. CDA 230 doesn't (and shouldn't) mean you can't curate what you host.

https://www.eff.org/issues/bloggers/legal/liability/230

 

[Steve Mayers]

I think we got off the rails with cloudflare discussion.

Cloudflare is infrastructure which should be reasonably regulated. Facebook is a platform and they have a first amendment right to regulate who they host. CDA 230 doesn't (and shouldn't) mean you can't curate what you host.

https://www.eff.org/issues/bloggers/legal/liability/230

Most of these idiots screeching "Muh free speech" don't understand that The First Amendment doesn't cover things like this. The First Amendment only protects you from government persecution. Companies like Google, Facebook, Twitter, etc have every right to regulate what they allow on their platform.

 

[Marvin]

Most of these idiots screeching "Muh free speech" don't understand that The First Amendment doesn't cover things like this. The First Amendment only protects you from government persecution. Companies like Google, Facebook, Twitter, etc have every right to regulate what they allow on their platform.

There's definitely situations where it gets hazy. The argument is about whether or not facebook has grabbed enough monopoly power (or something that approximates it) to the point where anti-trust law applies.

Like cases like these.

I'm not as impressed by facebook's market position as others are.

 

[Ineedahero]

Most of these idiots screeching "Muh free speech" don't understand that The First Amendment doesn't cover things like this. The First Amendment only protects you from government persecution. Companies like Google, Facebook, Twitter, etc have every right to regulate what they allow on their platform.

I'm sick of saying this, fuck that stupid xkcd comic, it's dumb. And us 'muh free speech' idiots are talking about free speech, not the first amendment, free speech - the most important and effective safeguard against tyranny from the left or the right. That's why we keep stupidly shouting freeze peach (lolol) and not the first amendment. But thanks for the neoliberal lesson in economics, fuck spending nine pages discussing the cornerstone of democracy, companies can do what they want and my brain stops working there.

 

[Your Weird Fetish]

There's definitely situations where it gets hazy. The argument is about whether or not facebook has grabbed enough monopoly power (or something that approximates it) to the point where anti-trust law applies.

Like cases like these.

I'm not as impressed by facebook's market position as others are.

I agree with you for the most part but I suppose there's a case to be made with things like Alex Jones being banned from multiple platforms on the same day that these companies are engaging in cartel behavior. Would that run afoul of any laws?

 

[Krokodil Overdose]

Cloudflare is infrastructure which should be reasonably regulated. Facebook is a platform and they have a first amendment right to regulate who they host. CDA 230 doesn't (and shouldn't) mean you can't curate what you host.

https://www.eff.org/issues/bloggers/legal/liability/230

That's exactly what it has to mean, if the distinction is be at all enforceable. Hell, the EFF themselves say as much, albeit in a roundabout way: "The courts have not clarified the line between acceptable editing and the point at which you become the 'information content provider.'" So in practice, it's just the same as being a publisher, just without all that pesky "liability" stuff. I'm sorry if I'm coming off as draconian here, but the fact is that without a bright line that defines the limit between "curating" and "providing," Silicon Valley will abuse the shit out of the legal gray area to the point where it's meaningless, as recent events have proven.

I'm sick of saying this, fuck that stupid xkcd comic, it's dumb. And us 'muh free speech' idiots are talking about free speech, not the first amendment, free speech - the most important and effective safeguard against tyranny from the left or the right. That's why we keep stupidly shouting freeze peach (lolol) and not the first amendment. But thanks for the neoliberal lesson in economics, fuck spending nine pages discussing the cornerstone of democracy, companies can do what they want and my brain stops working there.

No, no, you need to be the galaxy brain nibba who realizes that the George III could have solved the uppity colonist problem by selling off all the public fora to "Ye Olde Publick Squares" and had them shut down everything he didn't want to hear. Since it wouldn't be the government doing it, there's obviously no violation of natural rights.

I agree with you for the most part but I suppose there's a case to be made with things like Alex Jones being banned from multiple platforms on the same day that these companies are engaging in cartel behavior. Would that run afoul of any laws?

"Every contract, combination in the form of trust or otherwise, or conspiracy, in restraint of trade or commerce among the several States, or with foreign nations, is declared to be illegal." -Sherman Act of 1890. It would seem that Jones has a slam-dunk case, if he can manage to survive a legal battle against tens of millions of dollars in California lawyers.

 

[Marvin]

That's exactly what it has to mean, if the distinction is be at all enforceable. Hell, the EFF themselves say as much, albeit in a roundabout way: "The courts have not clarified the line between acceptable editing and the point at which you become the 'information content provider.'" So in practice, it's just the same as being a publisher, just without all that pesky "liability" stuff. I'm sorry if I'm coming off as draconian here, but the fact is that without a bright line that defines the limit between "curating" and "providing," Silicon Valley will abuse the shit out of the legal gray area to the point where it's meaningless, as recent events have proven.

The technical distinctions are vital here. It's not a legal gray area. The EFF specifically talks about platforms, which have first amendment rights to exclude posters, and disinterested technical providers, which have a much weaker claim to exclude people.

"Every contract, combination in the form of trust or otherwise, or conspiracy, in restraint of trade or commerce among the several States, or with foreign nations, is declared to be illegal." -Sherman Act of 1890. It would seem that Jones has a slam-dunk case, if he can manage to survive a legal battle against tens of millions of dollars in California lawyers.

Alex Jones is a terrible example because he easily violated plenty of valid rules facebook and other platforms had. You need to go a lot further to prove collusion other than it happening at the same time.

Honestly, the slam dunk case is facebook's to seize because Alex Jones' followers harassing Sandy Hook families.

 

[Krokodil Overdose]

The technical distinctions are vital here. It's not a legal gray area. The EFF specifically talks about platforms, which have first amendment rights to exclude posters, and disinterested technical providers, which have a much weaker claim to exclude people.

Yes, and then goes on to say that there's no actual hard-and-fast line within the law where one ends and the other begins. Given that the technical distinction is vital, it would be nice if there were some rules about what made them actually distinct in practice.

Alex Jones is a terrible example because he easily violated plenty of valid rules facebook and other platforms had. You need to go a lot further to prove collusion other than it happening at the same time.

That's what discovery is for. The alternative is this, but unironically:

Honestly, the slam dunk case is facebook's to seize because Alex Jones' followers harassing Sandy Hook families.

Wait, so Facebook isn't liable for content posted on it's platform/service/whatever it is this week, which they exercise editorial control over, but Jones is responsible for the actions of his fans, which he cannot control? How does this compute exactly?

There's a lot of gray areas in law. This isn't one of them. Is Jones engaged in trade? Yes. Did these companies form a conspiracy to retrain that trade? Not technically proven, but it seems likely enough to have standing at the very least.

 

[Marvin]

Wait, so Facebook isn't liable for content posted on it's platform/service/whatever it is this week, which they exercise editorial control over, but Jones is responsible for the actions of his fans, which he cannot control? How does this compute exactly?

The way the law is constructed, basically yeah.

You have a first amendment right to boot people from your service. But you're also not a publisher of their stuff if you choose to let them stay there.

 

[Anonimo]

That may sound ideal on paper but I don't trust Trump to do so fairly. If he loses the next election, no matter how fair the circumstances are I don't believe he will have the integrity to accept it. Look at how many times he moved the goalposts over Obama's damn birth certificate alone, the man does not accept loss whether he deserves it or not. I don't believe any political leader should be trusted to be that impartial and honest...


...You don't put this kind of power into the government's hands because even if they do what you want today, tomorrow they'll use it to do something you don't like and they'll declare you an enemy if you complain. Look at all the lefty Obama/Hillary diehards who think the world is ending every time Trump makes an executive order. These are people who had no complaints about Obama spending 8 years paving the way for anti-illegal policy, unending war, restriction of civil freedoms. The rug was pulled out from under them because they just assumed that power would always be used in a way they approved of and that magically no one else's input would ever influence it.

It doesn't matter how much you like today's leadership. You don't give them more power because you should always be afraid of tomorrow's leadership, including when it's the same people. No exceptions.

Yeah and this is something alot of Trump Supporters don't see. Like the Obama camp, they think Trump will be in forever or that a republican will always control the office. Obviously that's not true. The weapon you use today can be used against you tomorrow. I wanna say most people here on the farms are mostly around their 20s, maybe early 30s. You've lived through 4 presidents. Lets say you live to 100.

That means during our lifetime, we will elect 12-13 Presidents(more if some don't serve a full 8 terms, which is actually very rare). Put that into perspective. You trust one person to enact this and use it fairly but will you trust 7 more unknown people to also have this power in the future?

On that same token, for all of the talk about Trump looking to appoint himself president-for-life, I don't think he'll actually go through with it. Trump is more Berlusconi than Putin, and when you get down to it, he's more bark than bite. Yes, he might've talked about how he admired authoritarians and their abilities to control the press, if that's what CNN or MSNBC would have you believe. Though I think that's more a combination of having been a CEO and having a thinner skin than he needs to be President. Trump will probably leave office in place of a Democrat, or possibly another Republican if he doesn't end up serving a full eight years. He's not going to be around forever in any case.

On one hand, I think some corporations need to be regulated in the context of preventing something along the lines of the 2008 financial crisis. Here, when it comes to the Internet, I can only think about some of the measures being done in Europe and users from there lamenting how authoritarian it is. And if I see users from America like myself thinking this is a good idea, I can't help but think "is this really what we want?"

Politics are like a pendulum; they will swing back in your direction eventually. But if you try to force it instead of letting things take their course, the pendulum will swing back in the opposite direction twice as hard, and when it inevitably swings back in your direction, hit you in the face. Hopefully after getting hit in the face though, the pendulum will eventually correct itself and swing like it did before.

 

[mindlessobserver]

Sessions is planning a meeting of States Attorneys General on september 20 to discuss big tech. Its looking like an Anti-trust action may actually be in the works. Considering the absolute control Google and Facebook have over the social media space, its overdue, but its going to be curious to see how they actually plan on doing this. This is not like Standard Oil where they could just break the company up into various competitors that are viable on their own. There is no barrier to entry for creating a search engine or a social media networking platform. In fact, there ARE alternatives out their. The problem is nobody uses them. I suppose they could in theory break up all of Googles subsidary platforms. Make the search engine one company, youtube another, gmail another, etc. problem is the search engine is what pays for all the other features. Don't think the Administration will care if they break google though, since they are officially on the "enemies list".

https://www.sfgate.com/technology/b...lue-that-Republicans-will-act-on-13209087.php

We got a huge clue that Republicans will act on Trump's war on Google, and it might spark a breakup of big tech

The US government's sniping at Silicon Valley took an unexpected and serious turn on Wednesday when the most powerful lawyer in the country, attorney general Jeff Sessions, made ominous noises about monopolistic behaviour and censorship. In a statement on Wednesday the Department of Justice said (emphasis ours): "The attorney general has convened a meeting with a number of state attorneys general this month to discuss a growing concern that these companies.

There are two issues Sessions appears to be concerned with. One is that some tech firms, though he doesn't say which, are monopolies. The other is that they stifle free speech.

The latter is a Republican talking point that has gained ground after President Donald Trump accused both Google and Twitter of stifling right-wing voices, though without much proof.

As an example, he falsely claimed that Google promoted Barack Obama's State of the Union address, but not his own. He also claimed Twitter was "shadow banning" prominent Republicans, something Twitter has denied and which has been debunked.

It is true that Twitter did suspend right-wing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones from its platform for seven days, though he is active once more and freely posting videos on YouTube. The conservative press has interpreted his suspension as a free speech issue, despite the fact Jones demonstrably violated Twitter's policies.

Free speech might be a Trojan horse being used to breakup big tech
Trump and Sessions may have had their differences recently, but the attorney general seems to be picking up the baton from the President's Twitter tirades on tech. There are two things about Sessions' intervention that should alarm Silicon Valley.


One is that what is effectively an emotive Republican conspiracy can evolve into a high-level Justice Department discussion. The other is that the confected free speech issue might be a Trojan horse to breakup big tech.

Sessions said in his statement that he wanted to discuss how tech firms might be stifling competition, an issue which is quite separate from whether they violate the First Amendment.

The three obvious candidates for any antitrust investigation would be Amazon, with its dominance of retail, Google, with its dominance of search and online ads, and Facebook for its dominance of social media.

Many have made the case recently that Facebook should be separated from Instagram and WhatsApp, and that Google is the digital equivalent to big oil monopolies.

Up until now, it has not looked likely that the US would launch any antitrust investigation into three hugely successful homegrown firms. And it seemed especially unlikely that it would be the Republicans who triggered any kind of probe.

But Republican sensitivity to perceived bias, and tech firms' central role in the Russian misinformation scandal — which has been hotly pursued by Democrats — mean there is a bipartisan appetite to scrutinise tech companies.

Big tech is in the dock.