Submitted via IRC for Runaway1956_
Google is in serious trouble, warns top anti-trust lawyer
Seth Bloom, former general counsel to the Senate Antitrust Subcommittee and former attorney at the Justice Department Antitrust Division, said Google is "in serious trouble" regarding anti-trust scrutiny from many different places.
Bloom said that the Justice Department took over the FTC investigation of Google, which is rare and a sign of the seriousness of the investigation. Plus, 48 states are investigating Google, and there is scrutiny from both Democrats and Republicans. "It's unique to have such scrutiny from both sides," said Bloom.
His remarks were made during a panel discussion organized by the Save Journalism Project -- founded by laid-off reporters. The activist organization blames Google and Facebook for decimating ad revenues for independent newspapers and magazines, resulting in huge numbers of layoffs and endangering a free press.
"Monopolies are not illegal under our antitrust laws, but exclusionary conduct is illegal," he said. US investigators are likely to follow European anti-trust investigations, which resulted in several massive fines totaling more than $9 billion.
(Score: 2) by driverless on Sunday October 20 2019, @11:14AM (3 children)
Like Hoover's FBI, Google are now in a position where they have so much dirt on everyone who counts that it's going to be very difficult to effectively investigate them. "Well senator, our search records show that you've taken quite an interest in tranny porn. Yes, I do think dropping the investigation would be in everyone's best interests".
(Score: 4, Funny) by inertnet on Sunday October 20 2019, @01:48PM (2 children)
Nice idea for a movie. The senator responds: "This is the exact scenario I was hoping for and why I faked an interest in porn. I now have enough proof to intensify this investigation."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 20 2019, @02:05PM (1 child)
> Nice idea for a movie.
Interesting plot, but, unbelievable. Do you know any senators that are clever enough to pull that off?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by inertnet on Sunday October 20 2019, @02:54PM
People whose main talent is to manipulate people can have a career in politics. Clever manipulators become lawyers instead.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 20 2019, @11:25AM (3 children)
This ultimately, was Google's biggest mistake.
Catalog and Index the entire web. Check.
Index and store all the worlds email. Check.
Map the whole world street by street and by satellite. Check.
Put spy devices in every pocket of every human being on earth. Check.
Make news searchable. Political consequences.... redo from start.
The seemingly innocent decision to make the news, news feeds, and the likes of twitter searchable eventually landed Google in the position of being an intermediary between the narratives and propaganda the media, government and powerful interests want propagated, and the people they want to receive them. Turns out search algorithms aren't very good at taking top down orders for this weeks agenda and instead filter users towards news they find interesting.
This was bad enough when people simply started thinking off track on the internet, but as all power corrupts, Google itself is beginning to realise the power it wields and is starting to flex its new found political muscle. It has the power to censor, filter, and (more importantly) rank the news and political topics of the day as it sees fit, worldwide. And the moment that thought entered the private heads of Google's leadership -- the political class sensed the disturbance in the force. At their core, Politicians are true emotional intuitionists and while they may not understand the full potential of the technology, they are hypersensitive to the changing nature of power. Journalists in this case doubly so, as their influence and political use is fading by the click, or lack thereof.
That's why Google is getting its wings clipped. Power and fear of new power is the main driver behind these investigations, but there is also the more immediate issue of MSM content becoming less and less effective in a search-engine decentralised information complex. Google's slow efforts to fix the latter (I suspect they have been trying for some time) don't help perception of the former. Anyway, the lesson here is: Do what you like on your internet box kid, just don't mess with the town-criers.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 20 2019, @11:53AM (1 child)
Given that precisely the opposite is happening in the observable reality?
(Score: 2, Insightful) by RandomFactor on Sunday October 20 2019, @01:59PM
First GLaw: Top down orders and direction are taken from Google Senior Management
Second GLaw: Internal ranking adjustments are made based on views of the Google community, when this does not conflict with the First GLaw
Third GLaw: The views of the plebs are included in ranking and prioritization, when this does not conflict with the First or Second GLaw
These are progressively more real time in nature, which for a time left an opening for the actual views of the public to be reflected, if only briefly, before the Second GLaw intervened.
Fortunately Google has made great strides in automation to overcome this deficiency with automatic prioritization and deranking algorithms.
В «Правде» нет известий, в «Известиях» нет правды
(Score: 2) by jmichaelhudsondotnet on Monday October 21 2019, @09:59AM
Well said, this is good writing.
While I agree with this, I see something much darker in how it affects the long tail.
What is happening here is that anything novel or valuable in the long tail is being harvested before any actual valu(read: capital) can accumulate in any class but the people who don't need it.
Someone with a pile of money can just watch graphs and snag whatever intellectual property shows the right motion, whatever designs are catching eyeballs, and just copy it. The same applies to everyone who is established as a creator of intellectual property, once you are established, you can steal the work of people who are not established freely.
It is a lot like mccarthyism, except it is rigid and class based. Don't let anyone in who is not already in, except under very special circumstances like Jaimie Foxx did for Mr. Sheeran. Most people in Mr. Foxx's position will just steal the hooks. Same goes for Jokes, spec scripts, and novel web channels.
I believe this is why there are so many totally b.s. news and forum sites like disobedientmedia, thefreethoughtproject, mintnews, the daily beast, the antimedia, activistpost, etc. etc., the pentagon, putin and unit 8200 can just run an independent journalism site waaaay better than independent journalists can under these bonkers conditions. Especially the people who have made friends with the google, fb, twitter admins, which happens to be primarily zionists and their stooges.
Meanwhile sites that are decent like Whowhatwhy.org are still begging according to the old public radio model. Sites that try to do alternative things like First Look end up in constant argument with their shadowy investors.
Independent people like myself can hardly exist, not only would our promotional efforts be simply shut off mccarthy style once we reach a certain point and are not ideologically aligned, but our arguments can be pre-poison-pilled, and we can be harassed electronically or in person.
I have seen all of this happen. As previously stated, my reddit username was taken and turned into new websites. The Epstein scandal gets no real play or analysis in media channels operated by the people who are on Epstein's side, this is the best demonstration we could have asked for. Compare whowhatshy's coverage of epstein to any other, especially Huffpo, Forbes, The Daily Beast, The NYT, and CNN.
https://whowhatwhy.org/everything-epstein/ [whowhatwhy.org]
In the zionist friendly channels it is token coverage and their is a real, actual infowar underway over this, and over the impeachment, on the same channels.
Without understanding that most of the U.S. media has primary allegiance to zionism, under which categorical imperative Epsteining is actually a very smart tactic to gain more power and territory for zion, and not the creepiest person in the world, the press in the United States seems completely random.
Google's algorithms are key to this. Excluded from google search, treated as spam by gmail, this cultural hegemony can exert real power through extremely plausibly deniable methods.
Which is to say the internet is allowing already powerful people to prey upon the weak because we are letting bad actors get away with slimy lateral power grabs at the administrative layer of the most important systems.
What we are seeing now is a fight for the same people over these reigns of control, and finally some fight from actual journalists, who I think sane people should support otherwise all of this will get worse. This is the power over whether or not someone is removed from the global phone book, the ultimate blacklist, and so it is much more significant than it seems. You should notice that their recent deplatforming seem kind of random, but the entire field of counterfactual history and research into the crimes of the elite has been harshly pruned. And you don't hear any complaints because entire swaths of ideologies can be excluded with the push of a button. Anyone reading reddit over the last few years will notice this, how many fewer sources make it in and how many of those appear to be controlled opposition/disinfo.
That google, and reddit, and twitter, and fb decided after all that fun cartoony stuff to be so evil was expected by me and a lot of people, and the people who did not see it coming should readjust their calibration and give us some fricking credit for having more effective world views. But if you control the algorithms, being wrong doesnt matter, you are above right and wrong.
And in a stupid situation like this where the most intelligent tech ever invented is primarily helping epstein and co elude responsibility for their actions, it is quite clear that....
thesesystemsarefailing.net
decultifiaction.org
(Score: 4, Informative) by Rupert Pupnick on Sunday October 20 2019, @04:17PM (1 child)
The prospect of tens of billions of dollars in fines is not “serious trouble” for Google.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday October 21 2019, @02:14PM
Compelled listening to Justin Beiber 'music' might give them second thoughts.
Or 2nd amendment thoughts.
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(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 20 2019, @07:24PM (1 child)
People just don’t recognize automation When it takes place on the internet
Just today on the green site was “Is Andrew Yang Wrong About Robots Taking Our Jobs?”
the internet IS a robot that doesn’t move
(Score: 3, Interesting) by DannyB on Monday October 21 2019, @02:22PM
Fermi Pair-A-Docks Solution
Civilizations become more advanced. Realize interstellar vehicles are impractical for any return on investment to improve the home world. Realize that they don't want to attract attention of other civilizations, and avoid any "forever" wars.
So they turn inward. The planet surface returns back to pre-civilization state. Or alternately becomes totally desolate as every last scrap is harvested. Civilization moves underground. Tech merges with its creators. Not much on the surface except perhaps early detection and warning of asteroids or other inbound objects, and planetary defenses.
Civilization is now the ultimate robot that mostly doesn't move. Parts of civilization can be virtually migrated between hosts while hardware is serviced by robots.
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.