“In the run-up to the 2020 presidential election, America’s big tech companies are being challenged on many fronts from across the political spectrum, from antitrust concerns to their policies on political ads and ensuring election security,” Elizabeth Culliford writes for Reuters:
Many of the Democratic presidential candidates have argued in favor of either breaking up or tightening regulation of firms such as Facebook Inc, Alphabet Inc’s Google and Amazon.com Inc.
Republican President Donald Trump’s administration has also stepped up its scrutiny, announcing a wide-ranging investigation in July into whether major digital tech companies engaged in anti-competitive practices.
Here are some of the candidates’ positions on Big Tech.
President Trump: Trump has stopped short of calling for tech giants to be broken up, as Democratic Senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders have, but said “obviously there is something going on in terms of monopoly,” when asked about major tech companies in a June interview with CNBC.
Joe Biden: Biden, who was vice president in the Silicon Valley-friendly Obama administration, has taken a more moderate stance than his progressive rivals on the issue of big tech company break-ups. In a May interview with the Associated Press, he said that splitting up companies such as Facebook was “something we should take a really hard look at” but that it was “premature” to make a final judgment.
Elizabeth Warren: She has called for legislation to restrict large tech platforms – which she would designate as “platform utilities” -from owning and participating in a marketplace at the same time. Under this law, Apple would not be allowed to both run the App Store and sell its own apps on it, for example.
Bernie Sanders: His administration would “absolutely” try to split apart the companies, Sanders said at a Washington Post event in July… His broad plan to reshape corporate America would also mandate all large companies to be owned partly by their workers. Asked how he differentiates himself from Warren on major issues, Sanders told ABC in October: “Elizabeth considers herself – if I got the quote correctly – to be a capitalist to her bones. I don’t.”
MacDailyNews Take: More candidates’ positions are covered in the full article.
It’ll be very interesting to see the breakdown of political candidate contributions from employees of the big tech firms during the 2020 race.
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Liberals… please look at Andrew Yang.
Please don’t voter for an angry old commie screwball like Sanders. Please don’t vote for a an insane identity politics freak like Pocahontas. I mean she’s a disingenuous poo flinging harpy bozo.
Biden. Seriously? He’s the only true dyed in the wool hate based RACIST of the crowd, he doesn’t know what day it is, if he’s nominated women are going to crawl out of the woodwork making accusations about Mr. touchy, hair smelly, he was one of the architects of the Patriot Act, and he’s proud of it. He’s basically not well, and He’s an influence peddling evil bully.
Face it. You’ve got no one to vote for. That’s the entire reason for the “Let’s get Trump” insanity in the media and Congress. They aren’t running a candidate, they’re running an “anyone but Trump” hate campaign and you should be insulted and pissed. They’re counting on you being too stupid to realize this and voting for Warren or Sanders or one of their insiders. They’re also screwing over anyone that isn’t part of the cabal like Andrew Yang Tulsi Gabbard, although Gabbard also wants to break up tech to protect you from fake news. Why won’t anyone acknowledge that the biggest amount of fake news is coming out of leftist media?
Breaking up Apple is like breaking up McDonalds because they have a monopoly on BigMacs. It’s bullshit. It would be like breaking up McDonalds into the hamburger division, the fries company, the drinks company, etc. Just stupid. All of the big tech companies being targeted are not monopolies. We have choices. I don’t have to use a single one of them. I choose which ones I use and which ones I don’t. I would like Apple to open iOS up to non-Apple store developers, but that’s not worth breaking the company up. It shows how these people will destroy anything, do anything, to get power.
Except for Gabbard and Yang, all the 2020 candidates are Hillary’s dandruff. Yang is an economist. He’s at least read a wired magazine or 2. I have reservations about the whole Universal Basic Income thing, but in a weird way it fuels the engine of capitalism. He’s not preaching identity politics. He’s not treating black people like dullards. Like Trump, He’s not part of the Washington crazies or the media bubble that protects them.
He’s making the same old liberal mistake though. He doesn’t know people. You hand people $1000 a month, the first thing you hear about is gambling, booze, and drugs. The first thing I’d do is put together a consortium of investors. Everyone pooling their $1000. We could buy entire city blocks, clean them up, and turn them around.
If you have to vote for someone, vote for Yang. He’s a breath of fresh air. Someone who’s soul purpose isn’t to ban, break up, confiscate, tax, criminalize, regulate, instigate,
Plus the idea of President Yang negotiating with China could possibly be serendipitous.
How about a Yang/Gabbard ticket!
Doesn’t matter if the left ran a white guy who openly hated the LGBTQ community, voted against every.single.thing they claim to support and called them stupid for voting for him as he spat in their collectivist eyes, democrats would still do it out of the irrational hatred of one man.
Bet me.
No.
“How about a Yang/Gabbard ticket!”
Yes, I too am certainly impressed with both of them. Particularly Gabbard who eloquently put Hillary in her place…
Theo recommends replacing dotard with a “socialist” Democrat. You heard it here on MDN first!
What do you expect from a party that ran Hilderbeast, the most corrupt, lying thieving candidate in modern history?
Is that why upstaters always win the lottery?
I don’t think what we’ve seen from the Democrat establishment, and far left kook-sphere (Read: ANTIFA, Cancel Culture, Rage Politics, etc) in the last few years, in any way reflects the rank and file Democrat any more than some far right white supremacist represents conservatives. The crazies have gained control of the left and they are so damned dangerous now that I think it is imparative that contemporary conservatives and liberals to agree this is not liberalism. It’s something dark, authoritarian, frightening, fascistic, anti-free speech, and deeply anti-American. They neither have the best interests of the country or its people at heart. Just the opposite it seems.
Con Don: What does anyone need tech for?
“When I read about all of the different companies producing new computers by the thousands, it seems like a very tough business to me. But then, I don’t even know how to turn on a computer. Therefore, I’m not a natural investor in technology.” – Don’s ghostwriter in “The Art of the Comeback, pg 191, 1997.
“I know tech better than anyone.” – Con Don himself when the cameras were rolling, Dec 2018
Unfortunately this administration refuses to use science to its advantage:
Rather than incentivizing a renaissance of domestic tech production, this administration longs for a return to antiquated industries. 14,000 troops have been deployed to camp on Saudi oil wells while domestic technology research budgets have been slashed. Dead-end resource extraction industries like coal are touted as a jobs programs while improvements to technical training programs and job re-training remain woefully underfunded.
It outsources internet policy to ISPs, which have consolidated into media giants that own national cellular networks, regional terrestrial networks, global satellite networks, internet properties, and media production companies, dominating every source of information that consumers can access.
It turns a blind eye to corporate consolidation that restricts competition and consumer choice, especially with regard to media bundling and lack of internet bill of rights. It has dramatically increased spending on the swamp military/industrial complex in ways that do not serve future competitiveness.
It sends executive orders — not coordinated legislative reform — to enforce isolationist policy, preventing US tech companies from hiring international candidates who may be ideal tech workers in certain specialized areas (Einstein was a refugee and US immigrant; he’d not be welcome today). That is why overseas tech centers are now a given in all US corporations.
It refuses to use discreet and sensible communications and discussions with tech industry leaders, instead blasting tweet rage sessions to everyone at once, from iPhone criticisms to repeats of long debunked conspiracy theories.
It weaponizes state agencies, interfering with Congressional duty per the US Constitution, interfering with the Constitutional rights of the Free Press, and doing nothing to clamp down on internet lies spread by foreign agents.
Finally, this administration shuns all international cooperation, so large media companies are emboldened to shop around the world for loopholes that enable them to do anything they wish to do. Apple will pander to China dictate. Fuckerberg will attempt to create an alternative currency. Google will steal copyrighted works and anything else they can suck up from the web. Microsoft will ensure they are too big to fail by becoming a prime military contractor delivering a “secure cloud” — a complex oxymoron if ever there was one. Who would trust a Microsoft platform to be secure, or a cloud to be secure?
It would be forgivable to be less than 100% on top of every single technology issue that faces us all, but this administration is less competent than the Keystone Cops, has zero interest in progress, and is dumb enough to think that the USA (5% of the world population) can go it alone. This administration sets back the USA instead of setting it up as a tech leader going forward. Sorry, but no amount of spinning on behalf of the Con Don supporters here is going to change that. The proof is easy to find. Your tweeter in chief is a reality TV conman, not a tech leader.
For clarity and brevity fitting for most readers…
I don’t like Don, or Con-Don, Don the Con…which ever fits for you.
Yes, I know…I maybe suffering from TDS. I have a Friday appt to confirm.
You actually read his pompous opinionated hate filled diatribes? 😣 If I were his editor he would have been fired long ago…
If you were his editor, the publisher would have fired you for refusing to read submissions.
My publisher would not read him either and reward me with a promotion, raise and extra week of vacation for hiring a FAKE NEWS charlatan… 🤣
Correction: Firing… 🥴