Platforms

The Justice Department’s top antitrust enforcer, Makan Delrahim, is receptive to complaints that tech companies such as Google and Facebook may be hindering competition with their dominance but believes regulators lack the economic evidence that would be needed to prove such a case in court. Delrahim that there are “very valid concerns at some level” about whether companies in Silicon Valley are getting too big, or “stifling innovation or consumer choice.” In principle, those complaints could ultimately lead to an antitrust suit, Delrahim said.

The confirmation hearings of Judge Brett Kavanaugh were a poignant, painful and raw moment for the country. They were also a defining moment for social media. People posted their tears, their stories, their outrage wherever they were — in schools and on buses, at work and at home. From 9am to 7pm ET there were 8.8 million hearing-related tweets. That's well more than the 4.5 million tweets about this year's State of the Union address, but still far less than the 75 million vote-related tweets on Election Day 2016.

Former President Barack Obama urged private businesses to come out of “isolation” and to engage more with governments when developing new products and services to avoid problems like those challenging Facebook. Obama told business leaders that “you cannot separate the business environment from the political and social environment.” “A good example is Facebook,” Obama said, referring to the public relations pummeling the social media company has received following US intelligence service reports that Facebook was a conduit for Russian election meddling in 2016.

As Google marks its 20th anniversary, our relationship with it isn’t quite as uncomplicated as it used to be. In the wake of Facebook’s Cambridge Analytica scandal, and fears that the Russians exploited Facebook and YouTube to influence the 2016 presidential election, people are more wary of tech companies these days–especially ones that harvest personal data. This trend won’t reverse itself anytime soon.

Officials from 14 states' top legal offices and the Justice Department have begun a coordinated conversation about ways to keep tabs — and potentially rein in — the fast-growing tech giants. The gathering had been designed to focus on social media platforms and the ways in which they moderate content online, following complaints from President Donald Trump and other top Republican lawmakers that Silicon Valley companies deliberately seek to silence conservative users and views online.

Twitter announced a new policy addressing “dehumanizing speech,” which will take effect later in 2018, and for the first time the public will be able to formally provide the company with feedback on the proposed rule.

Google, Facebook, and Twitter have no incentive to inject bias in their platforms, because consumers across the political spectrum use social media and discriminating against any of them could drive people away. Consumers would be substantially worse off if social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter were broken up. Their value to consumers derives in no small part from the fact that they allow people to communicate with their friends and families with a single click.

Google Chief Executive Sundar Pichai plans to appear at a private meeting of top GOP lawmakers on Sept 28 and again at a public hearing later in 2018, responding to new scrutiny of the company’s work with China, its market power and alleged bias against conservatives in its search results.  “Google has a lot of questions to answer about reports of bias in its search results, violations of user privacy, anticompetitive behavior and business dealings with repressive regimes like China,” said House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), who is organizing Sept 28’s meeting.

House Commerce Committee Ranking Member Frank Pallone (D-NJ) Rep Bobby Rush (D-IL) pressed Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey to firm up his commitment to conduct a civil rights audit of his social media platform. Their goal is for Twitter to follow a kind of web Hippocratic oath: "First, do no harm to our country, our democracy, or the public." In the letter to Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, Reps Pallone and Rush said the civil rights audit was needed because of the use of Twitter to sew that division.