Wednesday’s hearing was supposed to focus on anti-competitive practices; instead, a steady stream of questions about censorship, political favoritism, and spam e-mails was highlighted.
Wednesday’s hearing on possible antitrust practices among the top tech companies, with testimony from Apple CEOs, Amazon, Facebook and Google’s parent company Alphabet, vacillated between insightful and downright absurd; Frankly, the audience leaned more towards the latter and it seems unlikely to have a lasting impact.
Together, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, Apple’s Tim Cook, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos and Alphabet’s Sundar Pichai run companies that have a combined valuation of $ 4.85 billion. There were relevant questions worth asking them about how their businesses operate, and some were asked, but on several occasions, the audience became a sham; questions about censorship decisions made by tech companies not even included in the hearing On other occasions, representatives were asked to yell at each other to wear their masks.
If you missed the hearing, don’t worry. Here are the seven moments that stood out.
Also read: Why do the reopening of cinema abroad show the first signs of progress for the industry?
1. Censorship was a hot topic
Wednesday’s hearing nominally focused on the anti-competitive practices of the four tech giants. But censorship on social media, as some might have expected, remained an issue that several Republican congressmen preferred to discuss. However, things did not have a great start. At the beginning of the hearing, Representative Jim Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.) Asked Zuckerberg why his company had withdrawn the recent Donald Trump Jr. post on hydroxychloroquine. However, the problem was that Sensenbrenner was referring to something Twitter did, not Facebook.
“I think he could be referring to what happened on Twitter,” said Zuckerberg.
Elsewhere, Zuckerberg defended Facebook’s record of censoring content, saying the company “had distinguished itself as one of the companies that most advocates for free expression.” He added that Facebook has no interest in being “arbiters of the truth,” but that it remains focused on removing hateful content.
The dividing line on Wednesday seemed to be that Republicans fear Facebook is cracking down on content, while Democratic representatives like Dave Cicilline criticized Facebook for not doing enough to censor hate speech.
2. Bezos had it easy, until he did not
The Amazon boss spent nearly two hours without being asked a single question, a remarkable period of time that many Twitter users quickly pointed out. However, circumstances changed when Representative Pramila Jayapal of Amazon’s home state of Washington pressured Bezos about Amazon’s business practices. “Let me ask you, Mr. Bezos, does Amazon ever access and use seller data when making business decisions?” asked the Democrat.
Bezos said Amazon’s policy prohibits that measure, but that it “cannot guarantee” that it has never happened.
Later, Bezos was asked if Amazon had deliberately lowered the price of diapers to undermine Diapers.com; Representative Mary Gay Scanlon (D-Penn.) Said the documents showed Amazon was willing to lose $ 200 million in selling cheap diapers to burst its competitor. Finally, Amazon bought Diapers.com in 2010 for $ 450 million. The move, according to Scanlon, was a prime example of Amazon using its weight to systematically eliminate rivals. Bezos said he did not agree with the premise, and that he did not remember too much about the events, which occurred a decade ago. The two exchanges stood out as rare moments when Wednesday’s audience seemed to stick to the script.
Also read: Triller nears deal to raise at least $ 200 million
3. The masks became the new muzzle
There were some irritating moments, even when Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) was asked to put on his mask when he made an exception to Scanlon saying he was pushing “marginal conspiracy theories” on censorship. You can check out the moment below, courtesy of CBS News:
Put on the mask!
Shouts are heard among members of the House subcommittee during the technical hearing, after Rep. Mary Gay Scanlon suggests Rep. Jim Jordan is pushing “marginal conspiracy theories” https://t.co/83sKht0bRx pic.twitter .com / E6fEZKT6tO
– CBS News (@CBSNews) July 29, 2020
Also read: Triller nears deal to raise at least $ 200 million
4. Zuckerberg defends the acquisition of Instagram
Zuckerberg stepped back animatedly when House of Representatives Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler (D-NY) said Facebook violated antitrust laws when it acquired Instagram for $ 1 billion in 2012. The move was not illegal, Zuckerberg said, because Facebook and Instagram had several competitors at the time in terms of photo-sharing apps; He also noted that the Federal Trade Commission understood this when it approved the deal. Zuckerberg acknowledged that the deal doesn’t seem so fair now that Instagram has more than a billion users, but that the platform’s success was not a guarantee at the time.
“I think in retrospect it seems probably obvious that Instagram would have reached the scale it has today, but at the time it was far from obvious,” said Zuckerberg.
Nadler doubled up, saying Zuckerberg’s admission to Instagram was a threat to Facebook’s business, only showing that it was a corrupt deal in the first place.
“This is exactly the type of anti-competitive acquisition that antitrust laws were designed to prevent,” Nadler said. “This should never have happened in the first place, this should never have allowed it to happen, and it cannot happen again.”
Also read: 8 burning questions for the summer TV press tour: Where are the executives? How much footage will we see?
5. Pichai Says Google Isn’t Playing Political Favorites
Despite the concerns of many conservatives, Pichai said Google is not deliberately removing conservatives from its search results. Pichai added that Google is politically “neutral” and is doing nothing to unfairly push the stories in favor of Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden at the expense of President Trump. “We will not do any work to politically incline something in one way or another,” Pichai said. “It is against our core values.”
His comments come after Breitbart.com editor-in-chief Alex Marlow told Fox News’ Tucker Carlson that his website had seen its Google-related traffic plummet from a precipice since the 2016 election.
6. I don’t work slave
The four tech executives promised never to use slave labor to create their products in response to a question from Rep. Ken Buck of Colorado. “I would love to get involved in legislation with you, Congressman. Let me be clear: forced labor is abhorrent and we would not tolerate it at Apple, ”said Cook.
The question was not entirely unexpected; Senator Josh Hawley’s (R-Missouri) office recently said that several global companies, including Nike, have been linked to slave labor camps for the Uighur ethnic minority in China. Considering Apple’s close business ties to China, as well as Alphabet’s connections to the country, the collective response was good to hear.
Finally, Cook, the man who runs the world’s most valuable company, had a relatively quiet day. He defended the App Store on a few different points, saying that the company may charge a 30% commission on all App Store sales, but that it’s not close to a monopoly when it comes to the app market (or any other market). ).
Also read: If TikTok is banned in the US, these 4 apps could benefit most
7. Email problems
One of the funniest moments, or a major waste of time, depending on your point of view, came when Rep. Greg Steube (Florida) asked Pichai a simple question: Why are his campaign emails going straight the Gmail spam folder?
Steube worried that her parents and followers were having difficulty receiving emails from her campaign, and wondered if it had anything to do with an anti-Republican bias on Google. Pichai said that was certainly not the case, and that it simply boiled down to Gmail prioritizing emails from accounts he knew were connected to friends and family.
You can see the full Steube question here:
Rep Steube complains to the Google CEO about his campaign emails going to the Gmail spam mailboxes and says it’s only happening to Republicans. (No, almost all campaigns address email delivery issues.) Pic.twitter.com/XH1floO9ff
– Tony Webster (@webster) July 29, 2020
The exchange was a microcosm of the day. The audience not only gravitated to questions that were unrelated to the issue at hand, but also provided few valuable details about whether the four companies have engaged in anti-competitive practices. Don’t expect too much from Wednesday’s audience.
