Before beginning his formal remarks, DOJ antitrust chief, Jonathan Kanter, confirms Will Smith isn’t in the audience. #disruptedtimes22
Consumers today have “too little choice over who gets to see their information and gets to extract their information.” Refreshing every time I hear a statement like this from the now head of antitrust for US DOJ, Jonathan Kanter. #disruptedtimes22
Kanter reiterates Justice Department’s “full-throated” (Kanter’s adjective, and we need it) support of the antitrust legislation which was sent to the antitrust leadership earlier this week.
“The only way to do it (antitrust enforcement) is to demonstrate courage, go to courts and say what we mean and do it as professionally as we can.”
“When it comes to antitrust and competition policy, we’re not seeing the polarization. It represents a mandate for decisive action.” - Kanter closes remarks on bipartisan nature of antitrust to address what should be downstream concerns for all Americans, lawmakers and democracy.
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Another order in NdCal for Facebook's Cambridge Analytica cover-up. This is the systematic probe of exactly what user data Facebook holds that is NOT included in the Download Your Information file. It will make FB super uncomfortable as plaintiffs seem to know way around. /1
The "Hive" is the massive data warehouse which Facebook allegedly collects and stores inferred data to use for maximizing its design and profits without acknowledging the user's individual data in the Download Your Information file. These are very specific details requested. /2
DataSwarm is also something recently discovered and plaintiffs are probing for their user data. "Facebook is to search and produce from table Y all Named Plaintiff data (columns/rows) that was not included in the DYI file." should be waking up every data protection regulator. /3
Now @linakhanFTC, chair of US FTC. “We now see a new transatlantic era” in dealing with market power concerns then recognizes efforts of US White House and bipartisan and bicameral efforts to push antitrust legislation along with international counterparts. #disruptedtimes22
Chair Khan is one of the many enforcers today who have very clearly and accurately tied antitrust enforcement to democracy. #disruptedtimes22
Chair Khan describes the surveillance advertising biz model of endlessly “hoovering up data and incentivizing tracking.” in a spot-on analysis of the leverage of the “new gatekeepers.” Remarkable to have a Chair who absolutely understands all of this. #disruptedtimes22
Ranking Member, House antitrust, @RepKenBuck points out how for a longtime consumer welfare was allowed to only be judged based on consumer price as an example of antiquated application of antitrust laws in the US. #disruptedtimes22
Buck also hits on the free expression concerns and choke point of gatekeepers as an antitrust problem causing a downstream concern of censorship. This is a smart understanding of the underlying issues. #disruptedtimes22
“I think we’re getting there. More and more people”…are understanding why the market power is core issue. Buck provides optimism of Republican support of new antitrust laws while recognizing his side of the aisle is more challenging to impact the market. #disruptedtimes22
Woah. Court just ruled to certify the class in lawsuit alleging Facebook sold ads based on inflated potential reach and then fraudulently covered it up. I'll link to more background on the case (and damning discovery) but first we have a few words from the federal judge. /1
Court does a nice job in a few sentences explaining Facebook told advertisers its "potential reach" in the US was 200 million people - note the word "people" is important - before they would narrow to a more targeted group leveraging Facebook's surveillance engine. /2
Facebook's (no, I won't call them Meta) lawyers first tried to suggest the class fails because it includes both small and large advertisers which went over like a lead balloon with this federal judge, errr "the objection is not well taken." /3
Important report here by FT on Yandex, the dominant search engine in Russia, its "data harvesting" practices and security risks from not knowing how they use it. A few key points I want to amplify or add as context to the report then I highly recommend going to read it. /1
It's important to note this is related to Yandex code (SDKs) embedded in apps that *may* allow them to sync user data for surveillance purposes. But Facebook and Google do this at a scale orders of magnitude greater (millions of sites/apps, billions of users) than Yandex. /2
Industry has previous asked "What would Google do?" as a north star for biz opportunity and the web (in fact, a Google apologist wrote a book with this title). Yandex is likely right in this statement. So the issue is Yandex's relationship to Russia which is now fair to ask. /3
and @MassAGO speaks with experience to @karaswisher considering she had to take Facebook to Supreme Court of MA as it resisted turning over results of its promised app audit...even who did the "audit" (we since learned it was FTI and Stroz Friedberg). /2