“Big Tech Oligopoly”

A trial in the landmark antitrust case against social media giant Meta kicks off in Washington on Monday.

The US competition and consumer watchdog alleges that Meta, which already owned Facebook, bought Instagram in 2012 and WhatsApp in 2014 to eliminate competition, effectively giving itself a monopoly.

The FTC reviewed and approved those acquisitions but committed to monitor the outcomes. If the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) wins the case it could force Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg to sell off both Instagram and WhatsApp.

He is disrupting the liberal democratic order

In a surreal cascade of events, the internet personality Andrew Tate has launched a political party. He has done this seemingly in response to a resurgence of interest in the scandal of Britain’s predominantly Pakistani Muslim “grooming gangs”, as these are euphemistically known; a fact made somewhat ironic because Tate himself, a self-declared Muslim convert, is alleged by Romanian authorities to have himself used the “loverboy” method to recruit young women into sexual exploitation.

The ‘progressive’ super-rich have no idea how much the public loathes them.

The greatest threat to Western civilisation comes not from China, Russia or Islamists, but from the very people who rank among its greatest beneficiaries. In virtually every field, the midwives of our demise are not working-class radicals or far-right agitators, but, as the late Fred Siegel called it, the ‘new aristocratic class’, made up of the well-credentialed and the technologically and scientifically adept.

The US has filed a landmark lawsuit against Apple which accuses the tech giant of monopolising the smartphone market and crushing competition.

In the lawsuit, the justice department alleges the company used its control of the iPhone to illegally limit competitors and consumer options.

The complaint accuses it of squashing the growth of new apps and reducing the appeal of rival products.

Apple has vowed to “vigorously” fight the lawsuit and denies the claims.

The federal government has put a price tag on how much it would like to see Google and Facebook spend under legislation that requires the tech giants to compensate media companies for Canadian journalism.

Federal officials estimate Google would need to offer $172 million and Facebook $62 million in annual compensation to satisfy criteria they’re proposing be used to give exemptions under the Online News Act, a bill passed over the summer that will force tech companies to broker deals with media companies whose work they link to or repurpose.

Update: Meta Rejects Trudeau’s Olive Branch in Canada Online News Feud

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Social media giant Meta says it has officially begun ending news availability on its platforms in Canada starting Tuesday.

Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, has been signalling the move was coming after the government passed its Online News Act, Bill C-18, in June.

The law requires big tech giants like Google and Meta to pay media outlets for news content they share or otherwise repurpose on their platforms.

Big Tech companies are deliberately manipulating the outcomes of our elections and the thinking and beliefs of our children. And they are having an enormous impact.

If you doubt that, consider this latest snippet of data from my lab, the American Institute for Behavioral Research and Technology (AIBRT).

Consider this: The GOP currently has a slim 10-seat majority in the House of Representatives. Without Google’s interference in 2022, it would likely now have a majority of between 27 and 59 seats.

The 2022 midterm elections that gave the Democrats a two-vote majority in the U.S. Senate had quite a bit of help from Google, and, to a lesser extent, from a couple of other major tech companies.