GOP Stops Pretending It Ever Actually Cared About ‘Antitrust Reform’

GOP Stops Pretending It Ever Actually Cared About ‘Antitrust Reform’

To be clear, despite the press narrative to the contrary, I don’t think either party is particularly serious about antitrust reform. Congress is simply too grotesquely corrupt, and the combined cross-industry lobbying opposition to meaningful reform too great, to currently be overcome without some sort of major policy and cultural trajectory shift and a massive upheaval in Congress.

Related:

Big Tech Antitrust Push in Congress Is Blunted by GOP-Led House

The appointment of Massie, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology-trained inventor who has filed dozens of patents, signals that the Judiciary Committee under Chair Jim Jordan of Ohio will shift its focus away from legislation aimed at curbing the power of the largest tech companies. Jordan has been more focused on free-speech issues, including big tech’s perceived liberal bias.

“We’re all united in wanting to stop the censorship of conservatives and the suppression of free speech,” Jordan said in an interview. “That’s going to be a focus of the full committee work.”

Funny, that’s not what Massie told Breitbert. 🤷🏼‍♀️

White House Releases Performatively Ridiculous ‘Principles’ For ‘Tech Platform Accountability’ That Include Removing Section 230

from the last-minute-homework dept

Fri, Sep 9th 2022 09:50am – Mike Masnick

During the 2020 campaign, there were a few times when candidate Joe Biden insisted he wanted to get rid of Section 230 entirely, though he made it clear he had no idea what Section 230 actually did. When I wrote articles highlighting all of this, I had some Biden supporters (even folks who worked on his campaign) reach out to me to say not to worry about it, that Biden wasn’t fully briefed on 230, and that if he became President, more knowledgeable people would be tasked to work on stuff, and the 230 stuff wouldn’t be an issue. I didn’t believe it at the time, and it turns out I was correct.

White House Releases Performatively Ridiculous ‘Principles’ For ‘Tech Platform Accountability’ That Include Removing Section 230

Doesn’t matter who’s in charge, they both want to cancel each other and censor whatever they determine is disinformation, whether it’s domestic or foreign policy!

Related:

Communications Decency Act – Section 230

Google tells Congress the proposed antitrust bill would hinder its censorship efforts

By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | June 9, 2022

Google continues to lobby and campaign against legislative efforts aimed at curbing its monopolistic power, this time openly, in a blog post.

Google tells Congress the proposed antitrust bill would hinder its censorship efforts

Related:

Executive Summary: Evaluating 2 Tech Antitrust Bills To Restore Competition Online:

Privacy and security: The bills would create greater incentive for companies to improve privacy and security, while carefully protecting their ability to make those improvements.

National security: In contrast to misleading claims to the contrary, the bills have multiple layers of provisions protecting American national security and do not create significant new risks. Rather, the bills can restore competitive pressure that supports American dynamism and global technology leadership.

Content moderation: The bills preserve platforms’ abilities to moderate content as they see fit. The bills create a very high bar for disgruntled complainants seeking to abuse competitive provisions to advance content moderation grievances.

Definitions of covered platforms: The bills’ definitions of covered platforms offer functional, well-informed ways to get at gatekeeping platforms of most concern, while effectively excluding smaller businesses.

Hidden Anti-Cryptography Provisions in Internet Anti-Trust Bills

by Bruce Schneier

Two bills attempting to reduce the power of Internet monopolies are currently being debated in Congress: S. 2992, the American Innovation and Choice Online Act; and S. 2710, the Open App Markets Act. Reducing the power to tech monopolies would do more to “fix” the Internet than any other single action, and I am generally in favor of them both. (The Center for American Progress wrote a good summary and evaluation of them. I have written in support of the bill that would force Google and Apple to give up their monopolies on their phone app stores.)

Hidden Anti-Cryptography Provisions in Internet Anti-Trust Bills

Previously:

Google tells Congress the proposed antitrust bill would hinder its censorship efforts