Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin Wants Justice Department To Scrutinize Big Tech (cnbc.com) 128
Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin on Monday joined the growing chorus of government officials concerned about tech monopolies. From a report: When asked if Google is a monopoly, Mnuchin said, "These are issues that the Justice Department needs to look at seriously -- not for any one company -- but obviously as these technology companies have a greater and greater impact on the economy, I think that you have to look at the power they have," Mnuchin told CNBC's "Squawk Box." Mnuchin acknowledged that antitrust matters don't fall under his jurisdiction, but said someone ought to be looking. His comments come on the heels of a "60 Minutes" segment on Google's unparalleled market share in online search. The Sunday night spot included an interview with Jeremy Stoppelman, co-founder of Yelp, which he said "would have no shot" if it were being built today.
Remember when Microsoft was worse than Hitler? (Score:1)
Remember when Microsoft was the ULTIMATE EVIL in the known universe because you had to download Netscape manually on Windows?
But remember, Google tracking your every move is fine because their leadership is considered to be "woke".
Re:Remember when Microsoft was worse than Hitler? (Score:5, Insightful)
Good Times. When Netscape was a 25MB download, we were on 5KB/s dialup, and you were potentially downloading it via IE, which couldn't resume interrupted downloads - so after an hour and a half, maybe your download completed or maybe you had to start over again.
Of course a handful of people discovered Opera, which at the time was a 3-5MB download and had all of Netscape's features including a mail client.
Plenty of competition needed (Score:1)
I can only hear Trump whining (Score:2, Flamebait)
News like this just makes me assume someone in the Administration is afraid of too many news stories and wants to be able to censor them.
Before Trump I at least looked for some explanation or rational reason. But it is all ruined. Every person in a position of power is corrupt and afraid of truth.
And while fake news is a problem, is rather have that and truth than lose both. While monopolies can guide or promote an agenda I'd rather be able to read reporting on that influence than have neither. Such a shame
I see only liberals whining (Score:1, Insightful)
The drumbeat to investigate Google and Facebook started long before Trump. In fact the current push is primarily a response to Trump winning, in part because he was able to use Facebook analytics as effectively as Obama...
And because they helped Trump, even if inadvertently, Google and Facebook must pay. Or so goes the mantra of the day.
Re:I see only liberals whining (Score:5, Insightful)
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I think the complaints against facebook are no so much about campaigns doing analysis of data so much as they are about injection of misinformation and stoking divisions. And now that it has been exploited once, even the people that exploited it woudl not want it used against them in the future.
I think the press have a virtual monopoly on stoking divisions by running inflammatory headlines like "white person does XYZ to black person". Oddly when a white person is the victim all racial info is left out. This obvious silliness reaches its peak with the "white privilege" concept.
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The drumbeat to investigate Google and Facebook started long before Trump. In fact the current push is primarily a response to Trump winning, in part because he was able to use Facebook analytics as effectively as Obama...
Actually, the issue here is not that candidate XYZ won but that it enabled a foreign power to manipulate voters.
And because they helped Trump, even if inadvertently, Google and Facebook must pay.
There was and is nothing inadvertent about what the "Internet Research Agency" does. Trump is simply a bit character in this whole mess.
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Story [dailywire.com] about one of those foreign entities that was indicted by Muller for interfering with the election.
Problem, company didn't exist during the election. Yep, evidence of interference from entities that DIDN'T EXIST during election.
Yea, there was Russian interference. They wrote fake info on Trump and sold it to Clinton. For some reason we don't want to admit THAT happened, but will go bat shit crazy over fake indictments from a special council that seems incompetent.
Re: I can only hear Trump whining (Score:2, Funny)
Do you suffer from Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS)?
Do thoughts of Donald Trump fill your every waking moment, and often intrude on your sleep? Are you unable to resist mentioning President Trump in unrelated conversations? Do your friends find you a bore and increasingly avoid your company?
At last there is help! New Donaldizole has been proven safe and clinically effective at treating TDS.
Side effects include deplorability, reduced capacity for self-deception, war weariness, and MAGA.
Ask your doctor abou
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Wouldn't it be better if we could have a discussion about something not related to politics with out some idiot bringing Trump into it?
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An yet, we are doing just fine.
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I mean me, and you, and our society as a whole. The economy hasn't collapsed. There hasn't been a nuclear war. All the Hispanics haven't been rounded up and tossed out of the country. In fact none of what liberals have been whining about for the last year has come true.
Sure we have some problems. Gun control is a big one. There are some environmental policies that are of some concern. That screeching fool Maxine Waters is still in office. But even with all that on a whole we are doing just fine
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Well first, lay off with the bold. It doesn't help your case and actually makes you come across as some what deranged. An looking deranged is actually the last thing you need to look like now.
Now then, we need to put to rest your fantasy and replace them with some facts. Lets get started.
We have balance. There are democrats and republicans in congress that keep the president in check. Notice, he is a president and not a king. So many people keep forgetting that. With that said neither party has
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Notice, he is a president and not a king. So many people keep forgetting that.
This reminds me of trying to talk to an acquaintance a while back about issues at work. She only wanted to talk about Trump. After 15 minutes I wanted to change topic and she wouldn't let go. My refusing to make my 24/7 topic Trump had her go into a meltdown where she literally said he was going to create concentration camps for all blacks and gays etc etc and if we didn't discuss him and how to stop him we were signing their death warrants.
I could only think "Do.... do you really think he can make conc
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Trump THINKS he's King and can do whatever he wants. That's what matters. A sane, emotionally balanced person would not think that way, they would de-couple their EGO (and his is gigantic) from the job. Not so with Trump. So much for that 'fact', too.
NO, he is NOT QUALIFIED. He's a
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The fictional name for this is called TDS, Trump Derangement Syndrome. It's supposed to be a sarcastic response to point out how silly peoples negative obsession with Trump is. But with some of the comments I keep seeing I wonder if we might have a real physiological disorder here.
I kept trolling here hoping at some point he would see how silly he was getting but I guess not.
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An there class is a classic case of TDS meltdown. Now unless there are any questions, I believe we can wrap it up here.
Class dismissed.
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I could only think "Do.... do you really think he can make concentration camps for everyone that isn't white and straight and the government would just let him????"
The President cannot do that, and that's where some of this "deep state" and "the swamp" talk comes up. They expect that everyone, including various people in the executive branch, have to be personally loyal to Trump and do whatever he wants. That is not, and should not be the case.
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Oh the "deep state." wooo wooo. I remember hearing talk of the deep state and the shadow government on fox news one night. I had to put my hand over my eyes to keep them from rolling out of my head.
Deep state is just the right wing version of lefty loons Trumps concentration camps. Complete an utter non-sense. Right loons would have us believe that Obama is running some secret government out of some spider hole in Nebraska.
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Calm down. Take some deep breaths. in, out, in, out. There feel better.? You where trolled. It happens to everyone at some point. It's not really that big of a deal.
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Any large company/industry needs scrutiny (Score:3, Insightful)
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It is more accurate to say they are no worse. At least the harm they cause to humanity is a few steps removed compared to the direct harm caused by Big Oil and Big Pharma.
There is direct harm to humanity - it makes us depressed and angry. There is tons of research and the link is clear.
Citations:
https://www.psychologytoday.co... [psychologytoday.com] https://www.independent.co.uk/... [independent.co.uk]
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I disagree. Big Oil pollutes. Big Pharma locks life-saving drugs behind massive cost barriers. Big Tech gathers every piece of data they possibly can and monitors everything you do to the highest extent possible.
Not to mention, 95% of the secret behind defense contractors is just software. Bombs, jets, spy satellites, autonomous killing drones, etc. all have the potential to affect your life in a much bigger way than an expensive pill or a puff of gas from a car ever would. You just don't notice it because
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Really? (Score:2)
And here I thought that separation of powers meant that people from the Executive should shut the fuck up about stuff concerning the way Justice conducts its business.
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You do realize that the Justice department is part of the executive branch right?
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And the Justice Branch should be able to install whoever it wants into the White House.
Soon we can be like Venezuela and make the voters into a useful formality.
It's not generally unfair business practices (Score:2)
that cause a single winner in each info-technology niche.
It's that one company executes better, and then the network effect kicks in, as that company collects more customers (who prefer it) and then gets the value of the collective interactions of and data from all those customers.
For consumers, often it's the case that having the search knowledge or the social network spread among different providers / applications just makes like more complicated for them, and reduces the simplicity and value proposition
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but only because they filled a need or provided value of a certain new kind to people first and best.
You are free to get together with a few fellow schemers and invent, implement and test, and promote, an alternative to each of the big players' info-products, and give yours the added feature of decentralization and no central ownership of or access to the collective-and-personal information-value.
You will probably have to charge people a nominal fee to use it, to cover your hosting fees and lunch money.
But
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I'm trying to figure out how Google would do this. I can't think of a single service from which Google has steered me away. Not that I use Google for anything outside of search and gmail, but. If a service starts up and Google artificially lowers its rankings, that would definitely get them into big-time anti-trust trouble. I don't see how that would be worth it.
Sounds good (Score:2)
We should also scrutinize government agencies and political offices while we're at it.
Worry about the banks first (Score:5, Insightful)
Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin on Monday joined the growing chorus of government officials concerned about tech monopolies.
How about the Treasury Secretary worry about banks that are a proven risk to the financial system first? The tech companies didn't cause a global recession within the last 10 years or require massive government bailouts or cheat people out of their homes and savings.
How? (Score:2)
Yeah, but there's a good chance they'll cause the next one.
Oh I've got to hear this story. How exactly do you figure the big tech companies are going to throw the world into recession requiring massive bailouts and forcing people out of their homes? Be specific on the causal mechanism.
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Yeah, but there's a good chance they'll cause the next one.
Oh I've got to hear this story. How exactly do you figure the big tech companies are going to throw the world into recession requiring massive bailouts and forcing people out of their homes? Be specific on the causal mechanism.
Microsoft
You should look up the definitions of "specific", "causal" and "mechanism".
Don't worry about general opinions when asked (Score:2)
I'm sure he does. Note how the story begins, "When asked if Google is a monopoly, Mnuchin said, "These are issues that the Justice Department needs to look at seriously...". It then confirms that he knows this is not under his jurisdiction. But there's no reason for him not to have a general opinion, and be suitably suspicious of these companies. As most of us here are....
I got a whole bag of "so" for you. (Score:2)
The Sunday night spot included an interview with Jeremy Stoppelman, co-founder of Yelp, which he said "would have no shot" if it were being built today.
We lived with Yellow Pages in the phone book for a hundred years, most of which was monopoly -- mandated at that -- for local and long distance together.
So..."So?"
pot meet vantablack (Score:2)
That's odd (Score:2)
He seems to have no problem allowing Sprint and T-Mobile to merge, weakening what little competition there is among the wireless providers.
Little man, big tech (Score:1)
This is about back doors (Score:2)
They don't want these companies to have less influence.
They just want more influence over these companies.
In fact, they want the companies to have more influence. They want to force them to use encryption that they can break. They've tried it before, and here they are trying it again.
Shakedown (Score:1)
Microsoft was the target of an antitrust action in the late 90s / early 2000s [wired.com]. Then they ramped up their lobbying spending [opensecrets.org]. The problem went away. Mnuchin is just looking to shake the money tree.
I think you meant (Score:2)
skew things closer to reality, using "big data" and objective machine-learning algorithms.
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His tiny babies are for sale [dunkindonuts.com].
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what happens when the "big data" and "objective algorithms" aren't politically correct and charge blacks higher rates because they are more likely to default? remember when the government tried to use objective algorithms to set bail for criminals, but since blacks are more likely to jump bail, they were given higher bail, and it was deemed racist and shut down?
Re: I think you meant (Score:1)
You know, there's a reason most stereotypes are true. But that being said, it doesn't make them fair. Especially if used to make decisions. Just because 1/4 of something is bad, doesn't mean you ignore the other 3/4.
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The only charges -obstruction of justice- had nothing to do with any prior crime being committed.
In otherwords, if there had not been any allegations no crimes would have even happened.
A spectacular waste of tax payer dollars amounting to little more than a way for the democrats to make themselves look less bad without actually contributing anything.
Moscow Donald - Caught Red Handed (Score:2, Informative)
What? All your phoney misdirection doesn't change the fact that Donald Trump Jr and Silent Jared, and Paul "House Arrest" Manafort all had a meeting with a self-identified Russian government lawyer about Russia's assistance to the Trump campaign.
It doesn't make up for decades of Russian money laundering followed by complete subservience to Vladimir Putin, whose Russian mafia pals kept Trump afloat financially.
No matter how Trump's Treason Team waves their arms, they have been caught red handed committing tr
Re: Moscow Donald - Caught Red Handed (Score:1)
How long did you guys investigate Hillary and Benghazi for? Yea, thought so, stfu and let the government work for us this time around.
You can't have it both ways. Stop acting like a child.
Re:Moscow Donald - Your Complicity with Treason (Score:2, Insightful)
The uranium never left the US, so you are just spreading misinformation for a known traitor.
Congratulations on betraying your country, you fucking turncoat.
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Wow, so many foreign ACs trying to manipulate us here. Let me remind you, it was Obama who told Romney that the 80s were calling and wanted their foreign policy back when he (rightfully) pointed to Russia as a threat. It was also Obama who was caught on an open mic telling Medvedev that he'd be able to help more after he was reelected. You weren't screaming "treason" back then, were you!?! Or, maybe you did when classified data was found on the private email server of HRC? And, don't even pretend to be
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I'm a progressive -- I also think that Big Tech knows too much and is often in bed with government/TLAs.
Anything that destroys this cozy relationship and causes friction is good in my book.
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Were this a different administration, I'd be supportive of the move. In this case I'm quite skeptical about their motives and what they are really trying to accomplish. But breaking up an abusive monopoly is not over-reach. I just really doubt that that's what they'd be after.