The Senate hearing on Google's ad business is beginning. You can find the livestream here: bit.ly/33w3gKb. Thread to follow.
In her opening statement, @amyklobuchar says that case against Google could be the beginning of a reckoning in antitrust.
If you're interested, you can find all of the testimonies here: bit.ly/33w3gKb.
Why did Google ads get pulled from the @FDRLST, asks @SenMikeLee. The Federalist had racist comments, says @d0nharrison, and we were working with the site to solve this problem. They could have had a click through screen, delete the comments, or moderate, Harrison says.
Google clearly has extraordinary market power if it can force small sites to moderate racist comments, says @HawleyMO. #antitrust
@HawleyMO is pushing a line of inquiry that will be key to the Google #antitrust case. How do we define search? Hawley thinks that people searching for products on Amazon's web site doesn't count as search that would be competitive to Google.
I'm interested to hear what @deaneckles thinks of this hearing.
@amyklobuchar asked @d0nharrison if the AdMob merger was anticompetitive. Harrison notes that the company took AdMob's nascent tech, combined it with Google's talented engineers, and were able to deploy the services across the site. #antitrust
@SenBlumenthal is right that Google is a big player for publishers and advertisers.
Google was ranked 6th in total ad spending, at $3 billion, behind Disney, Amazon, and Comcast: bit.ly/3hym94l#antitrust
@d0nharrison just brought up an underappreciated part of the conversation w/r/t Google's AMP. Sometime before 2015, Google reduced the total ad load by 50%, which dramatically increased user experience metrics: bit.ly/35AY9LD.
.@tedcruz just asked @d0nharrison about Robert Epstein's work on search engine manipulation. Harrison was being nice, but I won't be. Epstein's work is wild. Epstein said "bias in Google’s search results may have shifted upwards of 78.2 million votes." bit.ly/3kp9zpZ
To answer the question @amyklobuchar just asked about user knowledge of their data, there is a huge amount of research on this topic. I reviewed some of that here: bit.ly/2zCnpPY
The first panel just closed and I think the best line of questioning came from @SenMikeLee on the issue of user metrics. Google should be held to account for fraud. #antitrust
Quick question, shouldn't these senators, who collectively spend millions on political advertising, know how effective Google ads are? #antitrust
@amyklobuchar is right that the stocks of Apple, Amazon, Alphabet, Microsoft and Facebook constitute 20% of total market value. But market value isn't the same as revenue, etc.
A Reddit post led me to discover the fascinating history of the Cold War Heavy Press Program and the 50,000-ton press crucial for aircraft manufacturing:
Here's what else you'll find in the most recent edition of Techne... 🧵
- @SenSchumer released the long awaited AI roadmap, outlining a vision of AI policy built on eight detailed sections, including enhanced investment, workforce reskilling, and transparency. schumer.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/…
- Researchers at the National Energy Technology Laboratory in Pittsburgh found a large lithium deposit in the Marcellus Shale deposit stretching across Pennsylvania. sciencealert.com/a-vast-untappe…
In a recent @TheBARPod about the University of Austin, @jessesingal says that every kid around the country going to college learns about neoclassical economics and that's conservative. (open.spotify.com/episode/3ExeXB…)
Listen for the context above, but it's an interesting equality.
The *use* of neoclassical frameworks can be conservative and is coded as conservative, but it doesn't have to be. The neoliberals are decidedly Democrats and they use these frameworks.
Neoclassical frameworks have their limits, but they can be powerful tools/models.
But this loops back to the @uaustinorg bit that @jessesingal and @kittypurrzog talk through. I think it's instructive because even they overlook the single most interesting choice in the advisor list, the person not at all cited in the press.
The most interesting medical case I have ever heard:
"A previously healthy woman began to hear hallucinatory voices telling her to have a brain scan for a tumor. The prediction was true; she was operated on and had an uneventful recovery."
This story is amazing... 🧵
This story comes from the December 1997 issue of BMJ Clinical Research, and is titled, "A difficult case: Diagnosis made by hallucinatory voices" by Dr. Azuonye.
It is something, so strap in.
Born in continental Europe in the mid-1940s the patient, who is called AB, settled in Britain in the late 1960s. After a series of jobs, she got married, started a family, and settled down to a full-time commitment as a housewife and mother in the London area.
The most surprising results? Misinformation isn't good for tech's bottom line.
At a hearing on disinformation earlier this year, @FrankPallone slammed tech CEOs and their role in pushing misinformation saying, "You’re not passive bystanders. When you spread misinformation, actively promoting and amplifying it, you do it because you make more money."
@finkd hardly allayed fears, “While it may be true that people might be more likely to click on it in the short-term, it’s not good for our business or our product or our community for this content to be there.”
A thread of my favorite libraries. Up first, the Library of the Shiba Ryotaro Memorial Museum in Osaka, Japan. Designed by Tadao Ando in 2000. buff.ly/32f2VM9
The "Library-Dining Room" in Sir John Soane's Museum, a house museum in the former townhouse of John Soane, a 18th-19th century English Neo-Classical architect. reddit.com/r/RoomPorn/com…