Tech CEOs being grilled in congress today

[fskimospy]

The reason they are all there is not the reason they should be there.

The reason they should be there is because innovation and competition is being stifled by entrenched interests.

The reason they are actually there is because the tech companies have (correctly) realized the government is no longer a neutral arbiter.

 

[fskimospy]

K Street lobbyists have 10x the “influence” of Big Tech—they’ve bought and paid for politicians and legislation. But somehow, nobody ever really tries to regulate them until some scandal blows up in their face.

How many K street lobbyists do you think big tech has? My guess is a lot.

 

[Fanatical Meat]

So. Much. Whining!

Google CEO Sundar Pichai questioned at congressional antitrust hearing - CNN Video

After Rep. Jim Jordan's (R-OH) questions for Google CEO Sundar Pichai during a hearing before a congressional antitrust committee, a fiery exchange erupted between members of the committee regarding Jordan's subject matter.

www.cnn.com

sorry for the shitty video link

 

[UNCjigga]

How many K street lobbyists do you think big tech has? My guess is a lot.

Exactly. This is nothing but a dog and pony show for political points. Until you fix the lobbyists, you won’t change Big Tech. The only thing that matters is antitrust enforcement, which I don’t think starts with Congress.

 

[fskimospy]

Exactly. This is nothing but a dog and pony show for political points. Until you fix the lobbyists, you won’t change Big Tech. The only thing that matters is antitrust enforcement, which I don’t think starts with Congress.

I think it at least 50% starts with Congress.

 

[UNCjigga]

I think it at least 50% starts with Congress.

They can change how the laws apply to all publicly traded companies, but enforcement lies with FTC/DOJ.

 

[HumblePie]

I agree this is a huge problem. Whenever I go to Google News the top headline for every category is one from Fox News. Even though I have clicked not interested and don't show stories from this source they always appear. Tired of Google pushing the conservative agenda. They need to be held accountable.

Really?

I just went to google, searched for the word news, and fox news isn't even linked to in the first 10 pages. In fact, no right leaning site is. I can search for something more specific like tech for info on this current topic. Look, foxnews isn't in the first 5 pages. Got tired of clicking to see when it shows up. Want to know how to get foxnews to show up on the first page? Actually searching for foxnews. Otherwise it and any other right leaning site is buried in the google news search. Least duckduckgo is better and fox business news shows up in the first page or two every so often. Unless you have cookies for the search results to tailor you to fox news because you secretly like going there. Rarely is fox news ever positioned near the top for any news story unless you are searching for fox news specifically or a conservative ideal specifically.

I'm not saying fox news should be at the top of all search results for news, but your statement doesn't pass the sniff test. Realistically though, search engines should allow users to cookie/localstorage/account save preferred news sites they like going to. Maybe if they want to make things look fair when someone sets something like that up, they make the second search result the exact opposite political leaning new site they tend to want. Put a title around that result of... "Want to see what the other side of the rainbow has to say on this as well?" If I was making the decisions at these tech groups that is what I would be doing.

 

[Commodus]

Hearing in congress about big tech

Didn't see this posted.

Sometime back a Dr. Robert Epstein testified that Google can influence and swing votes by millions. Now the grilling of those CEOs begins.
The amount of influence big tech has should be alarming to everyone, especially when they can have influence over election outcomes.

I watched the entire hearing, and... while there were some reasonable questioning on both sides, most of the GOP's time was just grandstanding based on bogus allegations about anti-conservative bias in big tech.

Jim Jordan and Matt Gaetz in particular were just using the speaking time to parrot lies, including about that debunked hydroxychloroquine video and claims that Google was actively helping China oppress people. Jordan was about five seconds from being kicked out of the room.

 

[shortylickens]

i don't think these congresscritters have any clue what they're asking about.

they never do.
most congressional hearings are to make the public think they are trying to do something productive.
Joe McCarthy was a hateful piece of shit but the McCarthy hearings were all a big show. He really wasn't that angry, he had to look angry to get his point across.

 

[Grey_Beard]

I don't know about you, but my Apple News feed was filled with Trump slam posts from the Washington Post, New York Times, and Huffington Post before I manually removed them as news sources.

Actually, I removed the New York Times because I don't have a subscription and I kept hitting the weekly article limit. That said, the liberal bias on that platform certainly seemed real to me.

I think that the real reason Tim Cook was there is because you're forced to download applications from the Apple App Store if you have an iPhone, and they get a 30% cut on every purchase you make from it. Even in his wildest dreams, Bill Gates couldn't imagine that kind of monopoly power back in the 90's.

Not sure about you but I have 200 apps on my phone. Guess what that 30% cut is? 0, zilch, nada, zero, because they are all free. Interesting point about that though. Can you find a better encryption? Can you find a more private device? Maybe that’s why he was there. Maybe they want a back door.

 

[Grey_Beard]

So. Much. Whining!

Google CEO Sundar Pichai questioned at congressional antitrust hearing - CNN Video

After Rep. Jim Jordan's (R-OH) questions for Google CEO Sundar Pichai during a hearing before a congressional antitrust committee, a fiery exchange erupted between members of the committee regarding Jordan's subject matter.

www.cnn.com

sorry for the shitty video link

They keep spelling Gym wrong.

 

[ivwshane]

Really?

I just went to google, searched for the word news, and fox news isn't even linked to in the first 10 pages. In fact, no right leaning site is. I can search for something more specific like tech for info on this current topic. Look, foxnews isn't in the first 5 pages. Got tired of clicking to see when it shows up. Want to know how to get foxnews to show up on the first page? Actually searching for foxnews. Otherwise it and any other right leaning site is buried in the google news search. Least duckduckgo is better and fox business news shows up in the first page or two every so often. Unless you have cookies for the search results to tailor you to fox news because you secretly like going there. Rarely is fox news ever positioned near the top for any news story unless you are searching for fox news specifically or a conservative ideal specifically.

I'm not saying fox news should be at the top of all search results for news, but your statement doesn't pass the sniff test. Realistically though, search engines should allow users to cookie/localstorage/account save preferred news sites they like going to. Maybe if they want to make things look fair when someone sets something like that up, they make the second search result the exact opposite political leaning new site they tend to want. Put a title around that result of... "Want to see what the other side of the rainbow has to say on this as well?" If I was making the decisions at these tech groups that is what I would be doing.

Then you suck at the Internet.
A search on google for “news“ results in fox being the number two link. Number one? Google news.
I tried it on my iPhone both in private mode and in normal browsing mode. I also tried it on my Windows 10 computer using the edge browser and I got the same exact result.

Always the victim.

 

[s0me0nesmind1]

Let me summarize.


Congress wags finger
Congress Says "Don't do that again!!!"
Congress /wink /wink

Thus status quos remain the same from a continuously worthless pile of dog shit that we call representation.

 

[s0me0nesmind1]

I agree this is a huge problem. Whenever I go to Google News the top headline for every category is one from Fox News. Even though I have clicked not interested and don't show stories from this source they always appear. Tired of Google pushing the conservative agenda. They need to be held accountable.

LOL Google has a conservative agenda? Are you mentally deranged?

It's literally algorithms designed to show you precisely what YOU want. What YOUR bias' are.

 

[pcgeek11]

Yes part one is hardware vs software vs advertising
Paragraph two is about overall shitty business practices as in sell us your shit at a negative margin or we will enter your business or as you said forced acquisitions and so on. Right down to the old practice amazon had that was similar to Microsoft’s Old hated policy and I do know Microsoft stopped I’m not sure amazon has.
Basically set a performance bar and all those under the bar get fired. Say you set the bar at 15% bottom 15% get fired no matter what.
Conservatives let me explain this in a way you’ll understand bottom 15% sounds pretty bad but many times in high volume groups the difference between the top and the bottom is pretty marginal.
Let’s say you run a packing business, instead of setting a packing goal you say the bottom 15% will be fired. Yes you will get quick immediate improvements but they won’t last or you’ll end up doing something stupid that you’ll regret.
You have 20 packers, they averaged 8 packages per day. You introduce the new policy now they’re averaging 12 packages a day but you also have more broken good and mispackaged stuff. Your top two guys are packing 14 items, next 3 are doing 13 packages the rest are doing 10 to 12. You fire the bottom two ten packers, then get a complaint for unfair termination because there still is a 10 packer working. The two new hires pack 10.
Managing like this is easy but super lazy and shows zero respect and destroys team work. Shit I’d sabotage @pcgeek11 work to keep my job.

Why me?

 

[ch33zw1z]

A couple points we can all agree on, I think. If you don't like a service on the internet, don't use it. I only see Google and Apple as being the toughest challenges to get around because of mobile devices.

The others are easily avoidable. Don't like Facebook? Don't use it. Don't like Twitter? Don't use it.

*Note: here's the rub: if you have friends and family that use their mobile apps, then you'll be on their radar anyways. If you review the app permissions for Facebook, they basically own your phone. The list is extensive. They know everything about you and all your contacts and their information as well.

LOL Google has a conservative agenda? Are you mentally deranged?

It's literally algorithms designed to show you precisely what YOU want. What YOUR bias' are.

On this topic, I agree that's how it's supposed to work. However, it's not always the case. I turn off almost all the features I can possibly find to reduce their tracking of me, and also now send all my DNS requests thru a pihole server that sources from quad9 dns servers. Google has a really tough time giving me what they "think" I want. My point is that the algorithm isn't perfect, so I won't write off himkhan's xp hastily, but generally agree with you that he likely gets exactly what google thinks he wants, for whatever reason. IMO, Google just like most other "big tech" has a money agenda.

 

[mikeymikec]

Not sure why Tim Cook is there. Yes evil iDevices used to spread liberal propaganda

Surely they wanted Tim Apple?

 

[[DHT]Osiris]

It's literally algorithms designed to show you precisely what YOU want. What YOUR bias' are.

Fox is number two for me as well, and I don't think I've ever hit their site, at l east not from any computer I've been logged into. I suspect it's ranking based on 'search + hit' for the word news, and since Fox gets a greater concentration of people, it gets the top ranking (aside from Google's of course). As an aside, I use NPR or google news on the phone for 99% of my content, and again, I avoid the retarded conservative sites on there.

 

[ch33zw1z]

Fox is number two for me as well, and I don't think I've ever hit their site, at l east not from any computer I've been logged into. I suspect it's ranking based on 'search + hit' for the word news, and since Fox gets a greater concentration of people, it gets the top ranking (aside from Google's of course). As an aside, I use NPR or google news on the phone for 99% of my content, and again, I avoid the retarded conservative sites on there.
View attachment 27180

Even DuckDuckGo (my default searching tool) lists them at the top, which doesn't track you per their claim

Fox News is the default conservative media outlet, and gets TONS of traffic, so it's really not surprising that an algorithm that does track you could just hammer you with a major news outlet all the time.

 

[s0me0nesmind1]

Fox is number two for me as well, and I don't think I've ever hit their site, at l east not from any computer I've been logged into. I suspect it's ranking based on 'search + hit' for the word news, and since Fox gets a greater concentration of people, it gets the top ranking (aside from Google's of course). As an aside, I use NPR or google news on the phone for 99% of my content, and again, I avoid the retarded conservative sites on there.
View attachment 27180

Right but it's a multitude of things -

One - Putting Fox News as the #2 doesn't make me spew "Oh mah gawd! They are conservative bias!"... For fucks sake, it's 1 of 10 options that I would argue plenty of those (NPR, CNN) heavily skew left.

It tells me that Fox News likely pays them a crapload of money for them to be the 2nd one listed.

Regardless, it's not like you're seeing Breitbart there. Regardless of what folks want to tell themselves it is still a mainstream media news outlet.




But just the concept of suggesting that a Silicon Valley tech company is intentionally conservatively bias... is just fall on the floor fucking laugh worthy Seriously, you can't get anymore stupid than that.

 

[ch33zw1z]

Right but it's a multitude of things -

One - Putting Fox News as the #2 doesn't make me spew "Oh mah gawd! They are conservative bias!"... For fucks sake, it's 1 of 10 options that I would argue plenty of those (NPR, CNN) heavily skew left.

It tells me that Fox News likely pays them a crapload of money for them to be the 2nd one listed.

Regardless, it's not like you're seeing Breitbart there. Regardless of what folks want to tell themselves it is still a mainstream media news outlet.




But just the concept of suggesting that a Silicon Valley tech company is intentionally conservatively bias... is just fall on the floor fucking laugh worthy Seriously, you can't get anymore stupid than that.

Yes, there's plenty of examples of "more stupid" than that in our country. Surely you know this. His statement seemed to be based on his anecdotal evidence, and maybe he needs to change something.

Edit: NPR is dead center.

NPR op-eds are probably considered left tho.

 

[linkgoron]

Really?

I just went to google, searched for the word news, and fox news isn't even linked to in the first 10 pages. In fact, no right leaning site is.

Fox is number six from my laptop, after Google news (twice for some reason), CNN (once) and BBC (twice). From my phone it's the third result - after Google news and CNN. On DDG it's the first result.

 

[ch33zw1z]

Fox is number six from my laptop, after Google news (twice for some reason), CNN (once) and BBC (twice). From my phone it's the third result - after Google news and CNN. On DDG it's the first result.

Ah, the games we play. Android, Firefox, Google term "news"

Also, I currently have location services on, and typically I don't.

I find this stuff interesting.

 

[[DHT]Osiris]

But just the concept of suggesting that a Silicon Valley tech company is intentionally conservatively bias... is just fall on the floor fucking laugh worthy Seriously, you can't get anymore stupid than that.

Concur. I was only commenting on the 'feeds you what you want' part. I don't think google's search algorithms take your browsing history into account, just 'user trending' for lack of a better term.

 

[ch33zw1z]

I just did the same without no location, the list didn't change.

So I got on the VPN and tried again, Google made me confirm I'm not a robot, and the list didn't change lol