RKMBs Forums .::Important::. Politics and Current Events The Orwellian abuse of social media by the Democrat/Left

July 26, 2019, Friday

WASHINGTON (SBG) – The Department of Justice this week said it would investigate what it describes as market-leading online platforms. Companies such as Google, Facebook and Amazon would fall into that category. This investigation comes as these big tech companies are also under scrutiny by lawmakers.

In a news release, the DOJ said it would review how these market-leading platforms achieved their market-leading power and if they’re stifling competition, innovation and ultimately hurting consumers.


“Try and assess whether today’s antitrust laws are kind of inadequate for these types of big new tech firms,” said Ryan Bourne, the Chair of Public Understanding of Economics at Cato Institute in Washington, D.C.

He goes on to say that the investigation will be about catching up to technology, proving whether these companies violated antitrust laws and remembering that we’ve seen this before. For example, when Microsoft was accused of violating antitrust laws in the 1990s.

“Capitalism through history has shown even firms that appear incredibly dominant end up getting usurped by new products and new companies,” said Bourne.

The DOJ’s investigation will focus on the antitrust side of these online platforms, but Congress is looking into other aspects of these companies. That includes looking into whether there is political bias when it comes to algorithms and search engines.

Lawmakers have already been talking about this on Capitol Hill.

“Study after study has debunked suggestions of political bias,” said Sen. Mazie Hirono, D-Hawaii, during a July 16 hearing.

“Big tech’s favorite defense is it wasn’t me, the algorithms did it,” said Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas during that same hearing.

Lawmakers, such as Sen. Cruz, have highlighted examples of bias, referencing videos released by the right-leaning watchdog group, Project Veritas. In its latest video, Project Veritas said it interviewed a senior software engineer with Google. The employee, Greg Coppola, said that while he does not have a smoking gun, there is political bias at Google and that it is reflected in the search engine.

“I really don’t buy the idea that big tech is politically neutral,” said Coppola in the Project Veritas interview, “I just know how algorithms are, they don’t write themselves. We write them to do what we want them to do.”

Meantime, this DOJ investigation comes as the Federal Trade Commission imposes a five-billion-dollar penalty on Facebook. The FTC said Facebook violated a 2012 order by deceiving users about privacy control. Facebook will also have to restructure its approach to privacy from the top down. In a press release, Facebook said explains that the FTC investigation was sparked by the events around Cambridge Analytica last year.

We reached out to Google, Facebook and Amazon for comment on the DOJ investigation. As of this writing, we have not heard back. We also reached out to Google for comment on the interview by one of their engineers, we also have not heard back. We also reached out to Coppola and were able to speak to him by phone. He confirms the information he shared in that online interview and said that he has since been put on administrative leave by Google.