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Today, Congress is having a hearing with the CEOs of Apple, Alphabet (parent of Google), Amazon, and Facebook. During the testimony, a few things were said that need to be corrected. #BigTechHearing https://judiciary.house.gov/calendar/eventsingle.aspx?EventID=3113
First, a reminder: here is a list of promises these companies made when they bought competitors and the ways they broke them. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/07/dont-believe-proven-liars-absolute-minimum-standard-prudence-merger-scrutiny
Sundar Pichai of Google spoke of Google’s commitment to privacy and competition. But Google has abused the web standards bodies to retroactively rubber-stamp the technology that it's already deployed. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/07/googles-amp-canonical-web-and-importance-web-standards-0
Zuckerberg promised Congress that automated filtering would let Facebook block COVID misinformation and stop hate speech at scale. Zuckerberg is fond of claiming AI will fix all Facebook’s problems, but we know it won’t suffice to protect free expression: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/04/copyright-and-crisis-filters-are-not-answer
Tim Cook said before the app store, software was distributed on “CDs [that] had to be shipped.” Apple didn’t invent Internet distribution.
But it did introduce a locked-in platform that made it the gatekeeper for millions of iPhone users. That created a chokepoint for censorship that the Chinese government has exploited: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/02/apple-tell-us-more-about-your-app-store-takedowns
Representative Armstrong brought up the danger and unconstitutionality of geofence warrants. We agree. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/07/eff-files-amicus-brief-arguing-geofence-warrants-violate-fourth-amendment
Today Congress slammed Facebook for buying up companies to stop competition -- and they're right. Big Tech also buys up companies to get hold of our most private data: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/04/google-fitbit-merger-would-cement-googles-data-empire
