"Big tech poked the bear, and has now learned just how big his claw is."

Don Surber writes in his blog,

All I know about bears is you don't poke them.

That puts me ahead of Jack Dorsey and Zuckerberg. They run Twitter and Facebook, respectively, and they have been poking at Donald John Trump throughout his presidency.

Monday, he didn't poke them back. He sucker-punched them in the gut.

The New York Times reported, "President Trump on Monday temporarily suspended new work visas and barred hundreds of thousands of foreigners from seeking employment in the United States, part of a broad effort to limit the entry of immigrants into the country.

"In a sweeping order, which will be in place at least until the end of the year, Mr. Trump blocked visas for a wide variety of jobs, including those for computer programmers and other skilled workers who enter the country under the H-1B visa, as well as those for seasonal workers in the hospitality industry, students on work-study summer programs and au pairs who arrive under other auspices."

Read more here.

"the carefree evil that defines Silicon Valley’s culture of benevolent authoritarianism."

Chadwick Moore

It’s a good thing for President Trump the economy is doing decently well and that the Democrats don’t have a real contender in the fight — unless Michael Bloomberg gains traction — because for four years he sat idly by and allowed Jack Dorsey, Susan Wojcicki and Mark Zuckerberg to gradually decimate his army of street brawlers.

Read more here.

Big tech begins to tackle heart health

In CNBC, Christina Farr reports that

heart disease remains the leading cause of death for men and women in the U.S.

She reports that Apple is hiring medical experts, but

Heart health isn’t just a focus area at Apple. As Big Tech continues to explore whether it can penetrate the $3.5 trillion medical sector, cardiologists are often hired early and given senior roles. Alphabet’s health unit Verily chose a cardiologist, Jessica Mega, as its chief medical officer. And Amazon hired Dr. Maulik Majmudar, also a cardiologist, as a resident medical expert as it moves into health.

Read more here.

Elizabeth Warren: "I'm sick of freeloading billionaires!"

In the New York Times, Matt Stevens reports on a feud between Elizabeth Warren and Mark Zuckerberg.

Ms. Warren argues that the tech giants have essentially developed monopolies — they have “bulldozed competition, used our private information for profit, and tilted the playing field against everyone else.”

Her plan calls for legislation that would prohibit platforms like Amazon from both offering a marketplace for commerce and participating in that marketplace; appointing regulators to undo some tech mergers; and rolling back some acquisitions by tech giants, such as Facebook’s deals for WhatsApp and Instagram.

Later Tuesday, she pressed the issue, firing off a five-tweet thread that began: “Let’s talk a bit about my plan to #BreakUpBigTech and why it’s got Mark Zuckerberg so worked up.”

“Facebook is doing pretty well right now,” Ms. Warren said, citing its acquisitions as evidence that tech companies had amassed significant power and face little competition.

“Imagine Facebook and Instagram trying to outdo each other to protect your privacy and keep misinformation out of your feed, instead of working together to sell your data, inundate you with misinformation, and undermine our election security,” she said. “That’s why we need to #BreakUpBigTech.”

Read more here.

It begins

Maybe there is hope for free speech in America. Politico broke a story this morning that the White House is convening a "summit" on social media July 11.

The announcement came the same day Trump said the federal government should file lawsuits against some of the tech giants. The president has accused Google, Facebook and Twitter of being biased against him and other conservatives — a charge the companies have repeatedly denied.

"Look, we should be suing Google and Facebook and all that, which, perhaps we will," Trump said during a phone interview on Fox Business.

Trump has suggested the internet companies may run afoul of federal antitrust laws and floated possible enforcement action against them. Earlier this month, he suggested U.S. regulators should levy massive fines against the tech giants, saying “obviously there is something going on in terms of monopoly” in the sector.

"What they did to me on Twitter’s incredible. I have millions and millions of followers, but I will tell you they make it very hard for people to join me on Twitter," he said. "If I announced tomorrow that I’m going to become a nice liberal Democrat, I would pick up five times more followers."

Read more here.

Destroying America's Democracy

In Strategic Culture, Robert Bridge writes about how Silicon Valley tech giants are destroying democracy by playing political favorites.

As the social media companies hide behind their ‘private’ corporate status in order to curb political speech on their platforms with total impunity, they are exerting, at the very same time, powerful influence on the political process. In other words, they are empowered to do the very thing that many of their platform users are not, and that is to support their political convictions without fear of reprisal, banning and censorship. They want to have their private cake and eat it too.

The New York Times is doing its part in playing political favorites...The so-called “alt-right,” however, is not serving up extremist beliefs or Nazi ideology to attract viewers, as the New York Times claims, but rather coherent arguments that challenge the tenets of modern Liberal thinking. It may shock a lot of people, but a person does not have to be a Neo-Nazi to want strong national borders, for example, and laws that prohibit children from being taught about transgender lifestyles in grade school. Yet that is exactly how the right-leaning creators are being portrayed. And it is worth noting that these conservative ‘citizen journalists’ are doing a much better job at attracting audiences than the mainstream media, which is hemorrhaging both viewers and profits.


Needless to say, such hypocrisy and double standards on the part of the social media behemoths cannot continue in the so-called ‘land of the free.’ And with US presidential elections approaching in 2020, tensions over such arbitrary power by the social media companies will only intensify when the people come to understand their voices are being silenced. The situation may get bad enough that the question of social media freedoms will even be heard on the debate floor during the campaigns. At least we can dream; it seems to be all we have left these days.

Read more here.

Do you really think Big Tech is worried about Washington D.C.?

In AEI, James Pethokoukis writes,

...anti-tech activists and policymakers are pretty pumped on news that regulators and lawmakers are gearing up to scrutinize the tech titans. The Justice Department and Federal Trade Commission have apparently divvied up investigative authority over the companies. The DOJ is getting Alphabet-Google and Apple, with the FTC having oversight over Facebook and Amazon. Meanwhile, the House Judiciary Committee on Monday announced it will hold hearings into whether there’s enough competition in the tech sector. Taken together, the actions suggest broad support across Washington for the notion that Big Tech has become a problem.

...American antitrust doctrine is all about penalizing companies for being bad, not big, and in ways that harm economic welfare. It’s tough to make a broad antitrust case against companies that offer free, innovative services that consumers greatly value.

...Indeed, it’s market forces, not government actions, that are most likely to erode the dominance of Big Tech, even if the investigations result in European Union-level fines and a change in some business practices. Maybe the activists should try reading some quarterly reports from time to time. Alphabet’s most recent showed a big slowdown in Google’s ad business as it faces a growing challenge from Amazon. And while the online retailer might seem an unstoppable juggernaut, Wall Street analysts see a company surrounded by tough competitors such as Walmart and Costco, as well as the other Big Tech firms. Young adults are fleeing Facebook, which is trying to reinvent its business model to one that focuses less on targeted ads. Can Apple shift from hardware to services?

These “forever” companies face a host of challenges that never seem to get mentioned in the rush to dismantle or regulate. Of course, regulation can often help incumbents, too. This seems to be happening with Europe’s year-old data protection rule, which is increasing the ad market share of Google and Facebook vs. smaller competitors. If Big Tech stays big and avoids the natural churn of a market economy, the unintended consequences of government action rather than anti-competitive behavior might be to blame.

Read more here.

Amassing an army of lobbyists

In the New York Times, Cecilia Kang and Kenneth P. Vogel write about the lobbying efforts being made by Facebook, Amazon, Google, and Apple.

Faced with the growing possibility of antitrust actions and legislation to curb their power, four of the biggest technology companies are amassing an army of lobbyists as they prepare for what could be an epic fight over their futures.

Initially slow to develop a presence in Washington, the tech giants — Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google — have rapidly built themselves into some of the largest players in the influence and access industry as they confront threats from the Trump administration and both parties on Capitol Hill.

The four companies spent a combined $55 million on lobbying last year, doubling their combined spending of $27.4 million in 2016, and some are spending at a higher rate so far this year, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, which tracks lobbying and political contributions. That puts them on a par with long-established lobbying powerhouses like the defense, automobile and banking industries.

...Ms. Pelosi received nearly $43,000 in total donations for her 2018 re-election campaign from employees and political action committees of Facebook, Amazon and Alphabet, Google’s corporate parent — each of which ranked among her top half-dozen sources of campaign cash.

...It is hard to avoid the increasing prominence of the companies in Washington.

They finance some of the most influential think tanks from across the political spectrum, sometimes making it difficult for critical voices to win funding.

Google and Facebook have provided funding to hundreds of influential trade groups and think tanks across the ideological spectrum, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the American Conservative Union, the Brookings Institution and the Center for American Progress.

Read more here.

How times have changed in Big Tech

In Reason, John Stossel writes about how things have changed in Big Tech. When they were the head of the Big Tech pack, Microsoft used to have no presence in Washington D.C. Now Zuckerberg is practically begging D.C. to regulate. Why?

Read here.

The case for anti-trust regulation of big tech

Tim Wu writes in Wired about how the tech giants got away with not being regulated.

...In total, Facebook managed to string together 67 unchallenged acquisitions, which seems impressive, unless you consider that Amazon undertook 91 and Google got away with 214 (a few of which were conditioned). In this way, the tech industry became essentially composed of just a few giant trusts: Google for search and related industries, Facebook for social media, Amazon for online commerce. While competitors remained in the wings, their positions became marginalized with every passing day.

...Facebook, supposedly, is not building a global empire of influence so much as “bringing the world closer together.” It's a “different kind of company that connects billions of people.” To do that right, however, requires a global monopoly. Meanwhile, Google wants to organize the world’s information, but to do so it needs to get its hands on all the information in the world. Amazon, meanwhile, wants nothing more than to serve the consumer, which is great, and you can check out any time you like, but you can never leave.

If there is a sector more ripe for the reinvigoration of antitrust regulation, I do not know it.

Read more here.