“Big Tech Oligopoly”

Facebook and Google CEOs Mark Zuckerberg and Sundar Pichai signed off on a deal between the two companies to rig the digital advertising market, a recently unredacted lawsuit alleges.

The existence of the deal, dubbed Jedi Blue, was first revealed in a complaint filed by Republican Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton in December 2020 which alleged that Google unlawfully abused its dominance in the digital ads market. The complaint alleged that Google struck a deal with Facebook in 2018 to give the social company secret advantages in its ad exchanges, known as Open Bidding auctions, to the detriment of competitors.

Big Tech billionaires, including Mark Zuckerberg, who already censor comments and news they don’t like, are now coming after your local paper.

The group Report for America is placing its hand-selected woke reporters into local newsrooms across America to cover “under-reported” stories such as climate issues, Census Bureau block parties, how vaccines are working, and hating Donald Trump.

The Twitter founder’s vision could be paradise or hell on earth

Most of the commentary around Jack Dorsey’s departure from Twitter has focused around the company he leaves behind. There has not been much mention about where he’s going to.

Dorsey has resigned as CEO of Twitter in order to spend more time running Square, the other tech behemoth he founded. Now re-branded into a conglomerate called Block, this new empire could conceivably become more significant than the old.

“… Americans’ reactions to the social media censorship were part of the National Omnibus survey of 1,000 voters, and the findings spoke volumes. When asked “Do you believe Facebook, Twitter, and other social media sites’ censoring of the now-confirmed Hunter Biden email story constitutes election interference?” 51.8 percent responded, “Yes.” Just 32.2 percent responded, “No” — nearly a 20 percent difference. An additional 15.9 percent said they didn’t know. “

All over the world, great power governments are struggling with their respective tech giants for control of the social media platforms. China’s ongoing crackdown on big tech is the most conspicuous. “Take Jack Ma, founder of the e-commerce giant Alibaba.” The Party called the billionaire in, told him his forthcoming IPO was illegal, and served notice that any new initiatives would need the regulators’ approval. Russia’s not far behind. Moscow sees Google, Apple, Facebook, Twitter, and Amazon as a threat and wants them replaced by “sufficiently pliable domestic entities — such as Russia’s large tech conglomerates like Yandex, VK, and Sber.”

The freedom to engage in debate and challenge conventional thinking and wisdoms were not always accepted as human rights.

Philosophically the notion has existed for millennia with the most modern interpretations gaining their foothold in Greek debating chambers.

It has changed shape frequently and even been snuffed out by leaders of more totalitarian persuasions.

If a society was lucky, it returned. If not, poverty, starvation and horror tended to follow.

YouTube and the rest of the Big Tech menace must be brought to heel.

Even billionaire oligarchs can’t fight everyone everywhere forever.

Last Wednesday, former President Trump filed a class action lawsuit against Twitter, Facebook, and Google pursuant to their partisan censorship of viewpoints that conflict with those of their CEOs and employees. The next day, Trump took to the Wall Street Journal, where he succinctly summed up his most compelling argument for suing: “If they can do it to me, they can do it to you.” Ironically, this echoes what Bernie Sanders told the New York Times last March: “Yesterday it was Donald Trump who was banned, and tomorrow, it could be somebody else.” If Trump and Sanders take the same position on Big Tech censorship, the issue deserves serious attention.

The free and open internet is under attack in countries around the world, Google boss Sundar Pichai has warned.

He says many countries are restricting the flow of information, and the model is often taken for granted.

In an in-depth interview with the BBC, Pichai also addresses controversies around tax, privacy and data.

And he argues artificial intelligence is more profound than fire, electricity or the internet.

YouTube has deleted a video uploaded by the American Conservative Union, which hosts the Conservative Political Action Conference, for allegedly violating its terms and conditions about COVID-19, the group said on July 11.

In an emailed statement, the American Conservative Union (ACU) said its video featured former President Donald Trump’s announcement that he would file lawsuits against Google, as well as Facebook and Twitter.

The convenience of the smart home may be worth the price; that’s for each of us to decide. But to do so with open eyes, one has to understand what the price is. After all, you don’t pay a monthly fee for Alexa, or Google Home. The cost, then, is a subtle one: a slight psychological adjustment in which we are tipped a bit further into passivity and dependence.