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Jason Kint Profile picture
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21 Apr, 10 tweets, 4 min read
Senate App Store antitrust hearing now underway. Expect we’ll hear a lot about $ sharing terms, latest being Apple’s 30/15 announcement for its new podcast subs just yesterday. Major effects on news orgs, a subject of Lina Khan confirmation this morning. judiciary.senate.gov/meetings/antit…
Admittedly, I'm not an objective audience but having listened to all of the opening statements and hearing so far, it certainly makes it very difficult to understand how Apple and Google justify their take.
Oomph. Wait for it.
This ⬆️ came in the context of @SenAmyKlobuchar questions about retaliation of which House Chair (@davidcicilline) has also expressed great concern. Contacting an opposition witness the night before they testify sits between insanity and arrogance.
And @SenBlumenthal starts out by characterizing Apple and Google being here today “to defend the patently indefensible.”
“Here is my point...” is normally @HawleyMO’s magic words for “I just dissected your harmful business model” which he is especially good at doing in tech oversight hearings.
And now @MarshaBlackburn asking a Google policy lead to commit to something that would undermine their entire business model. But A+ for asking.
Curious as to Apple’s public policy calculus. They were scorched today along with Google.
Apple has the largest market cap on the planet, $200 billion in cash and if they had a more friendly App Store, they would likely be on the antitrust sidelines with Microsoft.
We have @dcnorg premium publishers who pay 30% of a $500 subscription and we have DCN members who pay 30% of a $20 subscription. Apple makes $150 on the former, $6 on the latter. For the same amount of work. Makes zero sense.
🍎

$15 to $18 billion in revenue.

$100 million in expense.

Nice lil business you got there.

Your numbers are wrong.

OK, what are they then?

We don’t keep track.

Oh. Sure. 🤦🏻‍♂️

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More from @jason_kint

Jason Kint Profile picture
22 Apr
Good convo now, @carolecadwalla doing a good explanation to @sinanaral @mit_ide on how Facebook also hacks press attention who try to hold them accountable. Even the review of the Cambridge Analytica case has been rewritten to match Facebook's narrative. web.mit.edu/webcast/ide/s2…
not many besides @carolecadwalla could connect Facebook's press strategy with last week's 530mm breach to the allegations of misleading the press, covering-up harms and business risk in the SEC complaint that was buried at the same hour of the 2019 $5 billion FTC settlement.
now discussion the "oversight board." I personally would expect increasing attention to the Trump decision in the coming days fed by Facebook seeking a "reality show" environment where all outrage can be defected towards this "outside" board. Again, attention hacking.
Read 4 tweets
Jason Kint Profile picture
21 Apr
This is a telling exchange. When I testified to @SenTedCruz in 2019 regarding his Google concerns, I walked through their dominance in “4 Ds” - data, distribution, design and dollars and his concerns are symptoms downstream from antitrust enforcement inclusive of data policy.
Hearing finished by the way. I can only speak to the questions regarding FTC matters but I would put it under the growing list of fairly informed oversight hearings relevant to Google and Facebook. It's been a multiyear improvement under leadership by both parties. Grateful.
and the questions and answers with @linamkhan make it incredibly clear to me how she would be a big net positive for the business of journalism particularly at the local level whether in rural Mississippi or Chicago.
Read 4 tweets
Jason Kint Profile picture
21 Apr
Dear press: Facebook comms is deceiving you (again) on these data leaks (see the 530mil last week). I encourage you not to agree purely to their OTR or background terms. Think Kellyanne Conway deception. No executive time / exclusives are worth it if the job is informing public.
eg 530mil leak, Facebook pushed out deceptive info on background to press. I’ve been asking @CaseyNewton for a week to fix this important error in his initial and influential report, respectfully provided explanation and an independent researcher’s contact info to explain to him.
A week later Facebook has watched the story die. Of course, that was their strategy and it leaked in the press today. BBC covered this earlier today, comms accidentally forwarded an internal email on how to characterize it as scraping of public information.
Read 7 tweets
Jason Kint Profile picture
20 Apr
deep breath.
#Justice - guilty, guilty, guilty
quite a split screen of celebration on left and Chauvin taken into custody on the right.
Read 4 tweets
Jason Kint Profile picture
20 Apr
But. The. Phone. Numbers. Weren’t. Scraped. Facebook is successfully positioning this breach as simply “scraping.” I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re doing it proactively. They would rather have a bad story they can control than a really bad one they can’t. ⬇️
Situation: you have a private phone # Facebook has stored in your profile, it was uploaded for two-factor authentication, and it’s set so that only you can see it. Meanwhile, the # is discovered and linked to you personally in bulk hacking of Facebook tools. Is that *scraping*?
linking back to the original thread on this incident. We had a public gathering of hundreds including the researchers who found it along with the press trying to untangle it in order to try to get to the facts. Here are relevant passages.
Read 4 tweets
Jason Kint Profile picture
19 Apr
Sorry, I'm a broken record here. please, I beg you press, don't just share FB's blog posts. Even if your outlet hasn't reported or added proper context, it's way better to link to a competitor's reports than to share FB's links.🙏🏼1/2 Image
this post was from Monika Bickert. She's the lawyer copied on many things Facebook is currently being sued by 46 state AGs, she also reports into same group as their govt relations. Also, super important point - @sarasidnerCNN is doing amazing work so this isn't criticism. 2/2
Here is the image of the full post. Again, I do these as service announcements and reminders. The response is always a thanks and never thought about it. If you see news reports discussing it, I'm happy to share those and happy to have you do it, too. Image
Read 4 tweets

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