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Swordsmyth
05-31-2019, 11:01 PM
The US Department of Justice is preparing an antitrust investigation of Internet titan Google, the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday.The Journal cited unnamed sources close to the matter as saying the department would look into Google practices related to web search and other businesses.
Justice department officials share antitrust oversight with the Federal Trade Commission, which conducted a wide-ranging investigation of its own into Alphabet-owned Google that ended in 2013 with no action taken.
Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
A new investigation would come as backlash grows against major tech companies that dominate key segments of the online economy.

More at: https://news.yahoo.com/us-preparing-antitrust-probe-google-report-025836509.html

timosman
05-31-2019, 11:07 PM
Maybe Google will get a clue? :tears:

Swordsmyth
06-24-2019, 09:50 PM
Texas Republican congressman Louie Gohmert, a Freedom Caucus stalwart, said that Google must have its immunity against class-action lawsuits stripped following Project Veritas’ expose of the tech giant’s political bias against President Donald Trump’s supporters and information that could help Trump win the 2020 election. Anti-trust suits are already forming (https://www.wsj.com/articles/googles-enemies-gear-up-to-make-antitrust-case-11561368601) ahead of an anti-Google coalition’s meeting with the Trump Department of Justice. Republican Senator Josh Hawley is launching a concerted effort to get rid of Google and Facebook’s Section 230 protections which they gained all the way back in 1996 (https://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2018/03/21/591622450/section-230-a-key-legal-shield-for-facebook-google-is-about-to-change).
“This video shows Google’s biases are now a threat to a free and fair election, all while they hide behind the immunity given by Congress years ago when they were supposed to be a simple ‘town square’ where everyone’s voice could be heard without biased results,” Gohmert stated.
“In fact, Google references a significant role they see themselves fulfilling in the 2020 elections. This discovery should set off alarm bells throughout the country. It is no secret that Google has a political agenda. Multiple brave tech insiders have stepped forward and exposed Google’s censorship of content and specialized algorithms. This media giant’s ‘social justice narrative’ should distress all Americans who value a free and open society. Google should not be deciding whether content is important or trivial and they most assuredly should not be meddling in our election process. They need their immunity stripped and to be properly pursued by class action lawsuits by those they have knowingly harmed,” Gohmert said.
BLP reported (https://bigleaguepolitics.com/google-executive-admits-they-are-thought-police-and-will-be-intervening-to-stop-trump-in-2020/): Investigative journalist James O’Keefe’s Project Veritas has released hidden camera videos (https://www.projectveritas.com/2019/06/24/insider-blows-whistle-exec-reveals-google-plan-to-prevent-trump-situation-in-2020-on-hidden-cam/) showing a Google executive explaining how preventing Trump and similar leaders is at the top of the monolithic corporation’s list of priorities.


“Elizabeth Warren is saying we should break up Google. And like, I love her but she’s very misguided, like that will not make it better it will make it worse, because all these smaller companies who don’t have the same resources that we do will be charged with preventing the next Trump situation, it’s like a small company cannot do that,” said Jen Gennai, who works as Google’s Head of Responsible Innovation.
Project Veritas notes that Gennai is in charge of the division of Google that is responsible for implementing Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies. This includes making sure that political outcomes unfavorable for liberals cannot be reached.
“We all got screwed over in 2016, again it wasn’t just us, it was, the people got screwed over, the news media got screwed over, like, everybody got screwed over so we’re rapidly been like, what happened there and how do we prevent it from happening again,” Gennai added.
“We’re also training our algorithms, like, if 2016 happened again, would we have, would the outcome be different?” she asked.

Gennai is proud of her organization’s push for thought control, and the “Machine Learning Fairness” guidelines that have been introduced following Donald Trump’s presidential victory over Hillary Clinton in 2016.
“The reason we launched our A.I. principles is because people were not putting that line in the sand, that they were not saying what’s fair and what’s equitable so we’re like, well we are a big company, we’re going to say it,” Gennai said.
The Project Veritas story also includes testimony and leaks from Google insiders documenting how the Big Tech corporation is working to fix the problem of “algorithmic unfairness,” which means thought control to stifle access to ideas that are not politically correct. Another euphemism they use is “unconscious bias” to justify their Orwellian machinations. Their censorship practices also apply to YouTube as well.
The entire video can be seen here (https://vimeo.com/344068138). This information may prove relevant in anti-trust lawsuits (https://www.wsj.com/articles/googles-enemies-gear-up-to-make-antitrust-case-11561368601) that are being developed against Google right now.

https://bigleaguepolitics.com/louie-googles-immunity-must-be-stripped-to-allow-class-action-lawsuits/

donnay
06-24-2019, 10:04 PM
Good. I am so sick of these monopolies. They think they are too big to fail.

AngryCanadian
06-24-2019, 10:08 PM
Good this has being long over due.

"NO ONE IS ABOVE THE GOV!"

jmdrake
06-25-2019, 05:08 AM
So that's why Google's stock is tanking.

donnay
06-25-2019, 05:24 AM
Flash back:


Lawyer Harmeet Dhillon: ‘Sundar Pichai Lied to Congress’ About Google Practices

CHARLIE NASH
17 Jan 2019

Lawyer Harmeet Dhillon discussed Breitbart News’ latest Google leak on Fox News’ Tucker Carlson Tonight, Wednesday, highlighting Google’s threat towards democracy.
On Wednesday, Breitbart Tech Senior Reporter Allum Bokhari published details about a leaked Google internal discussion thread, proving the company regularly adds search results, including negative results about prominent left-wing figures, to a blacklist on its platform YouTube.

“The term ‘abortion’ was added to a ‘blacklist’ file for ‘controversial YouTube queries,’ which contains a list of search terms that the company considers sensitive. According to the leak, these include some of these search terms related to: abortion, abortions, the Irish abortion referendum, Democratic Congresswoman Maxine Waters, and anti-gun activist David Hogg,” Bokhari reported. “The existence of the blacklist was revealed in an internal Google discussion thread leaked to Breitbart News by a source inside the company who wishes to remain anonymous. A partial list of blacklisted terms was also leaked to Breitbart by another Google source.”

After announcing that she would discuss the leak on Tucker Carlson Tonight, Dhillon appeared on Carlson’s show, Wednesday, to warn viewers about the threat Google poses to democracy.

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“Why is nobody covering this? That’s a great question. And this question as well: Google’s manipulation… why isn’t that a violation of campaign finance law? The company’s YouTube blacklist, for example, allegedly suppressed negative videos about Maxine Waters. Why is that not a contribution to Maxine Waters?” asked Carlson on his show. “Harmeet Dhillon, unlike us, is an attorney and she joins us tonight. So, Harmeet, you just saw a guy plead to a felony because he paid off his client’s girlfriend with private funds in the middle of a campaign. That was considered a campaign finance violation. Here you have the most powerful company in the world putting its thumb on the scale on behalf of candidates, but that’s not a campaign contribution? How?”

“Well it is a campaign finance violation, and if anybody thinks that this is some sort of aberration, Google has been doing this and bragging about it internally even in the last election,” Dhillon replied. “One internal person at Google, a manager at Google made a silent campaign contribution by turning out the vote and contributing turn out the vote efforts in several states that were swing states for Hillary Clinton, and specifically targeting Latino voters. I think people should be encouraged to do democratic activities like this, on both sides, and help with elections, but when a corporation does it, with its corporate assets, it needs to be disclosed as a campaign finance violation.”

“Here, you have the one example of Maxine Waters, but let’s just play this out. You have twenty plus Democrats running for the Democratic nomination. If Google decides to bump up the search engine results in a positive way for Beto O’Rourke in response to, for example, ‘Democratic candidates for president 2020,’ and then bump down Tulsi Gabbard or some others for example, that’s going to be a contribution, in my opinion, to those candidates who benefit from it, and a very valuable one,” she explained. “If it isn’t being disclosed as such, then that is a fraud on our democracy. And again, imagine what they’re doing to Donald Trump. They’re already doing it to Republicans as you have previously reported with regard to search engine results for Republican women, for Californian Republican Party, for various other Republicans.”

“This is a particularly shocking and alarming story that we really need to see our members of Congress, Senators, and the White House wake up about this issue, because otherwise, we aren’t going to be talking about a democracy in the next two election cycles,” Dhillon warned. “We’ll be talking about what it used to look like before we let Big Tech take over and control the outcome.”

Tucker then raised the possibility of President Trump even failing to be re-elected if Big Tech continues to influence politics at the current extent, and declared, “I wonder why the White House wouldn’t… they do control the executive branch of government… wouldn’t have been awakened to that.”

Dhillon responded, “We have seen Donald Trump, actually, tweet about this issue in September 2018. He tweeted, practically, about the subject matter of today’s story from Breitbart and people called him a conspiracy theorist, that it isn’t true, when now we see the evidence that they are doing this manipulation. And Sundar Pichai lied to Congress about it.”

“But these companies skilfully spread the money around, not just to members of Congress, but also people working in the administration who are looking for their exit and thinking, well, maybe I’ll work for the other side of tech policy and make a bunch of money advising Google on how to speak conservative to conservatives,” Dhillon concluded. “And that’s how it happens.”
https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2019/01/17/harmeet-dhillon-america-wont-be-a-democracy-if-we-dont-address-googles-political-interference/

Swordsmyth
06-25-2019, 05:40 PM
A "loose knit crew of rivals" are eager to help the government with its anti-trust probe of Alphabet, Inc., according to the Wall Street Journal (https://www.wsj.com/articles/googles-enemies-gear-up-to-make-antitrust-case-11561368601). Competitors of Google are doing everything they can to try and help the Justice Department in their probe, including readying documents and data in anticipation of meetings with regulators.

Many of the competitors have argued that large technology platforms illegally abuse their market power. Some of them have found support in Europe, where regulators have fined Google for monopolistic practices three times already. Google has paid the fines, but is also challenging them in court.
Now, rival companies are stepping up their lobbying in the United States, where antitrust investigations have been divided among the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission. Lawyers that specialize in antitrust law say that any probe could take years to complete. Google is preparing its case as well, while at the same time overhauling its lobbying effort in Washington, as we reported (https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-06-13/it-only-costs-google-20-million-year-control-us-government-0) days ago.


https://zh-prod-1cc738ca-7d3b-4a72-b792-20bd8d8fa069.storage.googleapis.com/s3fs-public/inline-images/goog.png
Google has already successfully navigated regulator scrutiny of previous mergers in 2012 and 2013. It had persuaded the FTC in the past to not pursue a possible antitrust case by agreeing to change some business practices.
The competitors that have aligned themselves with regulators (and against Alphabet) include companies like TripAdvisor, Yelp and Oracle. Oracle has briefed European antitrust regulators about Google's use of data to target ads and was a successful plaintiff against Google’s alleged anti-competitive behavior which led to a €4.3 billion fine last year.
Wall Street Journal parent corporation News Corp., along with other publishers, claim Google siphons ad revenue away from content creators. All of these companies obviously welcome further scrutiny into Google’s business practices. Additional companies have privately criticized Google, even though they haven’t made their critiques public.
Jason Kint, chief executive of Digital Content Next said: “There is a lot more concern that you hear behind closed doors.”

https://zh-prod-1cc738ca-7d3b-4a72-b792-20bd8d8fa069.storage.googleapis.com/s3fs-public/inline-images/goog%2021.png

Private testimony was paramount in the Federal Trade Commission’s previous probe of Google, where companies like Microsoft provided regulators information on their business practices. And last month a veteran of the online advertising industry told the Senate Judiciary committee that they should consider breaking up technology giants.
Brian O’Kelley, former chief executive of AppNexus said:

“We need to assume that internet giants, like any other big companies, will use their assets to maximize profit and strategic value. Either break up the internet giants or force them to treat their component parts at arm’s-length.”
In addition to the information gathered by US companies, regulators can gather evidence from overseas. During the FTC’s 2012 probe, both US and European investigators shared documents and updated each other during regular phone calls. EU antitrust officials say they’re willing to cooperate again with the US once it opens its probe. Regulatory agencies often need a company’s permission before sharing information with another regulator, but companies don’t usually object to it, so as not to antagonize the regulators.
https://zh-prod-1cc738ca-7d3b-4a72-b792-20bd8d8fa069.storage.googleapis.com/s3fs-public/inline-images/googlezilla_798125.jpg
And anti-trust probes are often more straightforward and direct in the EU versus the United States because the European commission has the power to launch an investigation and to decide on the fines and remedies by itself. The company then has the option of appealing in court, but the reputational damage is done and the appeal can take years. In the US, however, the Justice Department would have to bring the lawsuit in a federal district court.
Thomas Vinje, a partner at Clifford Chance said: “In that sense it is more difficult. Unless you move quickly and impose serious and effective remedies, it’s a waste of time.”


https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-06-25/googles-competitors-gang-help-regulators-make-anti-trust-case

Swordsmyth
06-26-2019, 05:30 PM
In a wide-ranging interview on Fox Business this morning, President Trump told Maria Bartiromo, reflecting in the bias against conservative speakers, that "we should be suing Google and Facebook and perhaps we will,”

More at: https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-06-26/twitter-facebook-slide-after-trump-says-us-should-sue-socials-perhaps-we-will

r3volution 3.0
06-26-2019, 05:43 PM
Texas Republican congressman Louie Gohmert, a Freedom Caucus stalwart, said that Google must have its immunity against class-action lawsuits stripped following Project Veritas’ expose of the tech giant’s political bias against President Donald Trump’s supporters and information that could help Trump win the 2020 election.

They're immune from class action lawsuits? That'd be news to me.

And what is the underlying cause of action for these prospective suits?

brushfire
06-26-2019, 07:23 PM
They're immune from class action lawsuits? That'd be news to me.


The fact that they received protection as they were a "service provider" and not a "publisher". However, they are losing that protection by taking publisher actions, such as actively editing and controlling the distribution of content.

What's more, russian collusion and election tampering seems to have set the stage for big tech collusion and election tampering. Big tech in general (google in particular) have explicitly demonstrated, and now even stated, that their objective is to influence the election through this active censoring of content.

r3volution 3.0
06-26-2019, 07:48 PM
The fact that they received protection as they were a "service provider" and not a "publisher"

If you mean section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, that doesn't give them immunity for class action lawsuits.

That gives them immunity for only certain causes of action, whether brought in a class action or otherwise.


However, they are losing that protection by taking publisher actions, such as actively editing and controlling the distribution of content.

They shouldn't have blanket immunity for any kind of claim, whether or not they take editorial control.

The connection between the two in the current law is stupid.

Here's how the law *should* work:
--they should be liable for any illegal content only if they fail to take it down after diuscovery
------how it actually works right now for copyright violations, for example
--they should be able to discriminate on any basis whatsoever (as should any private property owner)

The anti-capitalist and/or partisan hack fucktards pushing this agenda don't actually care about their liability for illegal content.

They simply want to use Section 230 as a bludgeon to make them stop taking down conservative content.

The end result of this tomfuckery will be a socialized internet (yippee).

UWDude
06-26-2019, 11:35 PM
--they should be able to discriminate on any basis whatsoever (as should any private property owner)



Oh, I see, you want me to hand over control to these people, because free market principles.
Even though most of them are not Americans. But I forgot, nations are fake anyway, so I should be happy no matter who is trying to silence me and silence anyone else that believes in free speech and the second amendment or bothers to ask questions.

Of course, this is not a coordinated attack by the international banksters, and their international corporations, making deals with international governments. All the world's major corporations are trying to alienate their conservative consumers, because alienating half your audience and customers, hell, enraging them, is good business.

I know who my enemies are. I will never forget who they are, and what they smell like.
I will volunteer for the firing squads, when it is all said and done.

I know war when I see it.

Swordsmyth
06-26-2019, 11:47 PM
Oh, I see, you want me to hand over control to these people, because free market principles.
Even though most of them are not Americans. But I forgot, nations are fake anyway, so I should be happy no matter who is trying to silence me and silence anyone else that believes in free speech and the second amendment or bothers to ask questions.

Of course, this is not a coordinated attack by the international banksters, and their international corporations, making deals with international governments. All the world's major corporations are trying to alienate their conservative consumers, because alienating half your audience and customers, hell, enraging them, is good business.

I know who my enemies are. I will never forget who they are, and what they smell like.
I will volunteer for the firing squads, when it is all said and done.

I know war when I see it.
The Orwellian censorship by the Big Tech monopolists is spiraling out of control. After YouTube booted Project Veritas’ video that exposed the electoral interference and thought control of Google off of their platform, their competitor Vimeo has now followed suit.

������ BREAKING @Vimeo (https://twitter.com/Vimeo?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw) has REMOVED Project Veritas saying: "You cannot upload videos that are hateful, defamatory, or discriminatory." Perhaps we embarrassed @Google (https://twitter.com/Google?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw) but NOTHING we said was hateful, defamatory, or discriminatory. They're trying to erase us from the internet. pic.twitter.com/mBfmeHo4i0 (https://t.co/mBfmeHo4i0)
— Project Veritas (@Project_Veritas) June 26, 2019 (https://twitter.com/Project_Veritas/status/1143996700543131648?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw)
Vimeo could gain market share from exposing the truth about Google’s machinations to undermine the democratic process in the United States. Considering they are one of YouTube’s top competitors, this would be a way for them to gain much-needed market share in a competitive industry.


However, Vimeo is doing the opposite. They are in effect harming their own business and protecting their competition. This action shows that Big Tech corporations are enforcing an agenda of social control, where dissent is to be stomped out by any means necessary.
Project Veritas pointed out the nature of this sinister cartel that works in tandem to enforce Big Brother:

1. @YouTube (https://twitter.com/YouTube?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw) bans @Pinterest (https://twitter.com/Pinterest?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw) investigation
2. @Twitter (https://twitter.com/Twitter?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw) suspends Veritas for Pinterest story
3. @reddit (https://twitter.com/reddit?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw) bans Project Veritas
4. @YouTube (https://twitter.com/YouTube?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw) bans @Google (https://twitter.com/Google?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw) investigation
5. @Vimeo (https://twitter.com/Vimeo?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw) removes Project Veritas account
DO THINK BIG TECH IS WORKING TOGETHER?
— Project Veritas (@Project_Veritas) June 26, 2019 (https://twitter.com/Project_Veritas/status/1144003696369577985?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw)
The video is still available to be accessed on BitChute (https://www.bitchute.com/video/re9Xp6cdkro/) for the time being. Who knows if BitChute will be targeted by their DNS provider to toss them offline for not imposing censorship, as the unprecedented crackdown against right-wing dissident thought continues.
Project Veritas followed up their hidden camera video with several more disclosures to further expose Google’s biased and deceitful practices.
They exposed YouTube for putting pro-life search terms on a blacklist (https://bigleaguepolitics.com/project-veritas-exposes-youtube-for-electoral-manipulation-prior-to-abortion-vote-in-ireland/) prior to a key Irish abortion referendum. They also showed leaked documents indicating that Google employees’ internal communications had referred to PragerU, Jordan Peterson, and Ben Shapiro (https://www.projectveritas.com/2019/06/25/breaking-new-google-document-leaked-describing-shapiro-prager-as-nazis-using-the-dogwhistles/) as “nazis using the dog whistles” who should be targeted for potential censorship.

More at: https://bigleaguepolitics.com/collus...-interference/ (https://bigleaguepolitics.com/collusion-youtubes-competitor-bans-project-veritas-video-exposing-googles-electoral-interference/)

TheCount
06-27-2019, 05:19 AM
Tech man bad

Swordsmyth
06-27-2019, 02:26 PM
Tech man bad
Beware of geeks bearing gifts.