XPost: alt.politics.conservative, sac.politics, alt.politics.media
XPost: alt.fan.rush-limbaugh
From: bksherman@latimes.com

Big Tech is “out to get conservatives,” Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan
charged Wednesday as lawmakers grilled the heads of Amazon,
Facebook and other online giants in an explosive congressional
hearing on their power.

Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg were joined via videoconferencing
due to the coronavirus on Capitol Hill for the antitrust hearing
by Apple CEO Tim Cook and Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google parent
company Alphabet.

Lawmakers argued that the companies have gained not only an
outsize share of dollars and users, but also control over online
discourse.

“I’ll just cut to the chase,” said the Republican Jordan in a
fiery opening remark. “Big Tech is out to get conservatives.
That’s not a suspicion, that’s not a hunch — that’s a fact.”

Jordan cited as evidence a series of perceived double-standards
in which the online voices of conservatives, including President
Trump, have been silenced, while others have gone unchecked — a
notion he called particularly troubling with Election Day fast
approaching.

“We’re 97 days before an election, and the power … these
companies have to impact what happens during an election, what
American citizens get to see before their voting, is pretty darn
important,” he said.
Later in the hearing, Jordan dug into Pichai, repeatedly
demanding assurances that Google would not tip the scales for
the Democrats in November.

“Can you assure Americans today you won’t tailor your features
to help Joe Biden in the upcoming election?” asked Jordan, who
mentioned reports of a “silent donation” the company made to the
Clinton campaign in the 2016 election cycle.

Jordan had to repeat the question several times during his
allotted five minutes before Pichai finally uttered, “You have
my commitment.”

Jordan’s grievances notwithstanding, lawmakers on both sides of
the aisle were united in holding the tech titans’ feet to the
fire, amid bipartisan concerns that they’ve developed a
stranglehold on the internet and American life.

“Our founders would not bow before a king, nor should we bow
before that emperors of the online economy,” said Democratic
Rhode Island Rep. David Cicilline, in remarks that kicked off
the 1 p.m. hearing.

The CEOs — who together represent firms that make up $5 trillion
of the US economy — pushed back on claims of their dominance by
saying they face intense competition.

“Every day, Amazon competes against large, established players
like Target, Costco, Kroger and, of course, Walmart — a company
more than twice Amazon’s size,” said Amazon CEO Bezos, the
world’s richest man with a personal fortune of some $180 billion.

Zuckerberg similarly painted Facebook — a sprawling social-media
empire with some 2.5 billion active users — as an “American
success story,” scrapping for a piece of the pie with the other
companies represented.

“[The] most popular messaging service in the US is [Apple’s]
iMessage,” he said. “The most popular app for video is
[Google’s] YouTube. The fastest-growing ads platform is Amazon,
the largest ads platform is Google. And for every dollar spent
on advertising in the US, less than 10 cents is spent with us.”

But Rep. Pramila Jayapal took a far dimmer view of the company’s
reach and alleged practice of browbeating up-and-coming tech
competitors, like Instagram, into selling to Facebook.

“When the dominant platform threatens its potential rivals, that
should not be a normal business practice,” said Jayapal (D-
Washington). “Facebook is a case study, in my opinion, in
monopoly power, because your company harvests and monetizes our
data, and then your company uses that data to spy on competitors
and to copy, acquire and kill rivals.

“Facebook’s very model makes it impossible for new companies to
flourish separately, and that harms our democracy, it harms mom-
and-pop businesses and it harms consumers.”

Cook, meanwhile, answered questions about Apple’s App Store —
the gateway through which all software that wants to make it
onto an iPhone or iPad must pass.

Apple has been accused of unfairly blocking apps that rival its
in-house versions from appearing in App Store results, and has
faced intense criticism for the 30 percent cut it takes from App
Store purchases.

“I’m here today because scrutiny is reasonable and appropriate,”
said Cook, pointing to the number of independent developers
given a platform through the company’s App Store. “If Apple is a
gatekeeper, what we’ve done is open the gate wider.”

It was the frequently evasive Pichai, however — defending
Google’s far-reaching online ad business — who seemed to catch
most of the flak.

Cicilline charged that Google has “evolved from a turnstile to
the rest of the Web, to a walled garden that increasingly keeps
users within its sites.

“It used its surveillance over Web traffic to identify
competitive threats and crush them,” continued Cicilline. “It
has dampened innovation and business growth … virtually ensuring
that any business that wants to be found on the Web paid Google
a tax.”

Before the hearing even kicked off, Trump, a frequent critic of
Big Tech, tweeted that lawmakers must bring about change — or he
would do it himself.

“If Congress doesn’t bring fairness to Big Tech, which they
should have done years ago, I will do it myself with Executive
Orders,” he wrote. “In Washington, it has been ALL TALK and NO
ACTION for years, and the people of our Country are sick and
tired of it!”

https://nypost.com/2020/07/29/big-tech-ceos-bezos-cook-others-to- appear-before-congress/

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