US Elected Officials Leap to the Aid of Consumers, Voters, and Those Who Have Not Spent Enough for Influence Peddlers
July 20, 2022
Over the years, I have enjoyed the very, very slow realization that search results are NOT objective, that user privacy is NOT a priority, and that Congressional investigations are NOT particularly rigorous. Remember those statements, “Senator, thank you for the question.” The statement is followed by jibber jabber that makes clear the person representing a giant firm does not know [a] much about what the business does, [b] is not sure about what the impact of those processes have, and [c] are mostly concerned with nest feathering and reputation grooming.
I thought about my past secret pleasures when I read “Internal Documents Show Facebook and Google Discussing Platform Strategies: The House Judiciary Committee Released New Documents Tuesday.” The write up reports as actual factual behavior:
The documents were obtained by the House Judiciary Committee as part of its lengthy investigation into anticompetitive behavior from Amazon, Apple, Google, and Facebook’s parent company Meta. The investigation wrapped up in 2020, but the newly published emails, memos, and reports provide new evidence backing the committee’s calls to advance tougher competition rules for the tech industry.
Okay, about a two year or more delay between having documents and fortuitously, sincerely, responsibly sharing the information.
Let’s see. I think the people releasing the documents in this expeditious manner affect high-tech companies. These are, in my opinion, exemplars of ethical capitalism which have contributed to [a] the destruction of small retail and service businesses, [b] fostered disunity with echo-chamber content recommendation scripts, [c] egregious management actions with regard to those who disagree or who generate babies in a legal department, [d] twisting procedures to create new revenue opportunities, and [e] just being all around great people at high school reunions, Aspen Institute gatherings, and at NCAA basketball playoff games.
If you want to read these documents, you can navigate to this page, live as of July 20, 2022: https://judiciary.house.gov/online-platforms-and-market-power/additional-documents.htm
My suggestion is that one should access the documents more quickly that the elected officials released them. Like information about the MIC, RAC, and ZPIC activities, data can disappear from a government Web site. Poof. Gone.
I am now officially laughing at this document dump and its timing. Ho ho ho. There are more Amazon documents than information from either Facebook or the Google. Lovable Amazon. Who knew?
Stephen E Arnold, July 20, 2022
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