surprise. bipartisan state attorneys general (17 in total) filed their third amended complaint against Google late Friday night. This is the lawsuit where my initial reaction in December was, "Google is screwed." It's only gotten worse as evidence has been unsealed. /1
We've done a full comparison between 2nd and 3rd complaints. A ton of clarity added for charges which are both deeply technical but deeply concerning. I don't see how Department of Justice delays filing their own lawsuit. And the Facebook collusion charges should be criminal. /2
The lawsuit even more clearly lays out the conduct and harms which impact advertisers, publishers, and consumers. If you want to understand how a company generates approaching $1 billion of advertising revenue per day by extracting welfare from everyone else - here you go. /3
Despite there being probably a dozen pieces of jaw-dropping evidence in the lawsuit, the deal with Facebook to allegedly rig the market and "kill" a competitive threat to Google are still towards the top. (note: the red for example is new copy from the amended suit). /4
The Google and Facebook deal is also known as "Count IV - Unlawful Agreement in Violation of Section I of the Sherman Act" which should be criminal if the allegations hold up. Facebook's Sheryl Sandberg and Google's Philipp Schindler executed the deal. /5
Much of the new material seems focused in the areas around how auctions work, how Google's dominance on all sides of the market plus access to the data, has been used to enrich Google and kill off competition. Some new evidence here now sealed - we look forward to reading. /6
Here is a link to my master thread on the case from December 2020. /7
And don't miss the thread regarding the recently unsealed version of the complain which allowed us to see some of the direct evidence involving some of the most senior executives. /8
Woah. Sheryl Sandberg, former COO of Facebook, just sanctioned by Delaware judge for deleting emails ahead of trial this spring. This is the state pension shareholder case alleging the company overpaid the FTC and SEC in $5B+ settlements in order to protect Zuckerberg. /1
Long after the books had been inspected and many lawsuits had played out, it was disclosed last year she had a personal Gmail account under a pseudonym that may have been used for relevant communications. /2
The Judge here calls her a "high sophisticated individual." He probably doesn't know about the 2018 NYT report on how she carved out these issues in her Senate Intel testimony or how their lawyers were sanctioned on related discovery in California. /3
wow. This AI lawsuit against Facebook keeps getting worse as they reluctantly unseal documents on Court orders.
Check out this allegation. Not only two hrs before discovery cut-off but the Friday before we now know Mark Zuckerberg was deposed... /1
Here is the bit from the newly filed and now unsealed third amended complaint. Allegations here Facebook used torrenting to download a pirated dataset to train LLaMA thereby also "seeding" pirated content globally. This is a BFD. /2 storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.usco…
In fact, it can be criminal so this count is in the third amended complaint and the state attorney general (hello, @AGRobBonta) should note these allegations here. As it relates to this case, it may also break their privilege claims since it alleged to further a crime. /3
wow. Upon Court order, incriminating exhibits were unsealed at 3:30am in an AI lawsuit against Meta. Once past a 'fake privilege,' it appears Zuckerberg approved the use of a highly controversial, pirated dataset.
Note OpenAI, too? AI companies with no ethics or guardrails. /1
Here they acknowledge risk in media coverage, and massive EU fines, if "we have used a dataset we know to be pirated." So then you ask yourself the question, did they actually know it was pirated and use it? I uploaded docs - . /2 storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.usco…
To that question, here is how the internal project manager describes the dataset. Note the line (these are all my yellow highlights), "when sourced from copyrighted materials without the permission of copyright holders." /3
woah. This Friday? Too much moving on court dockets so I will surface for you. This matters, in this mega-Facebook case, as highly respected Chenault was Chairman of Facebook's board during its biggest scandals. WSJ reported he left board after disagreements with Zuckerberg. /1
Here is the report on his departure, it includes reports of disagreements with Peter Thiel, too, over elections policies and "clashes" over moderation policies.
Btw, highly relevant to the last 24hrs of news. /2 wsj.com/articles/chena…
Moving on, Zuckerberg has also been noticed for deposition after "alleged wrongdoing on a truly colossal scale." He was already deposed last month in Hawaii for 7hrs. I would expect SEC closely compares transcripts to their 2019 depo which @zamaan_qureshi managed to unseal. /3
Here is how NYT reported it in the complaint. Google and Facebook suggested it was misrepresented. Their proxies have misled public into thinking it was dismissed from lawsuit despite Google's CEO being deposed about it only months ago. /3 nytimes.com/2021/01/17/tec…
woah. ~300 redacted summary judgment google exhibits posted in TX. I've uploaded all. most eye-popping - we finally get Google-Facebook contract (aka Jedi Blue) alleged as bid rigging (yes, press was misled, it's still part of the claims). /1
If you need a definition for Match Rate, Google and Facebook include it with example of using the "encrypted blob" on mobile, feels very much like a fingerprint y'all. Here is the full contract, don't sleep on section dealing with monopoly enforcement. /2 storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.usco…
There are a ton of new exhibits from discovery with similar themes of Google secretly using projects to manipulate its black box auctions. "The first rule of Bernanke is we don't talk about Bernanke." /3