Still at top of mind for many is last week’s Facebook Edition of Congressional Oversight Theatre.
Where our elected officials pretend to do something about something – by holding hearings.
During which they look and sound very outraged at the latest outrage. They create soundbites and press releases they can send back home – to prove to their districts that they are doing something about something.
South Carolina Republican Congressman Trey Gowdy is someone who has built quite the reputation with his DC theatrical performances. The former prosecutor asks at hearing he sometimes chairs pointed, insightful questions – and often gets Leftist Swamp Creatures to hang themselves with their answers.
These hearings do sometimes swerve into apparent usefulness. In the recent past, former officials James Comey, James Clapper and John Brennan have all committed demonstrable Contempt of Congress testimony.
But Congress – never presses anyone to press any charges. They just issue more press releases – expressing yet again their outraged outrage at the cavalcade of government officials who lie to them.
Why wouldn’t these government officials lie to Congress? Nothing ever happens to them when they do.
Why should we take Congress or their hearings seriously? Nothing ever comes from them.
Last week’s Mark Zuckerberg Facebook fest was no different – and in a couple of ways even worse.
For one – the titanic Tech ignorance on display from the vast majority of our elected officials was truly impressive.
And the cognitive dissonance on display – was mind-boggling. This Congressional Outrage!™ – was from a Congress that has passed and renewed for more than a decade the government’s massive, warrantless Hoover-ing of our data.
(National Security Agency) N.S.A. Collection of Bulk Call Data Is Ruled Illegal
That was published in May 2015. Has the illegal bulk data collection stopped? Heavens no. From April 2017:
NSA Concedes Violating Surveillance Limits and Pledges Curbs on US Email Collection
Oh…they now PLEDGE curbs. I feel so much better. Don’t you?
The NSA’s 12-Year Struggle to Follow the Law
You try citing a “struggle to follow” Internal Revenue Service (IRS) law at your next audit – and see how that goes.
But please do not misunderstand. This is not to in any way downplay how unbelievably in-depth Facebook gets in collecting our data.
The Massive Data Collection by Facebook – Visualized
Think you can get away? You can’t.
Zuckerberg Admits Facebook Collects Data on Non-Users
And Facebook is just a social network platform – using your data to sell you stuff. (Oh – and help out Democrat politicians.)
Think Facebook Knows a Lot about You? Google is WORSE!
Big Tech Google is using their massive data-collection-coin (Market Cap: $718 billion) – to fund their monopolistic business practices.
First they raise the coin….
The Evil Side of Google? Exploring Google’s User Data Collection
Four Ways Google Is Destroying Privacy and Collecting Your Data
Google Data Collection Worries Americans More than NSA
Google Collected Data on Schoolchildren Without Permission
Google Fined for Illegal Data Collection
Then Google uses their massive coin – to crush their competitors. On the Web – and in more traditional business sectors.
Traffic Report: How Google Is Squeezing out Competitors and Muscling into New Markets
That was from June 2010. How goes Google’s Monopoly Project?
Google Fined Record $2.7 Billion in E.U. Antitrust Ruling
Google remains impervious to being daunted.
But that’s just Leftist Europe being Leftist Europe, right? Not so fast.
Seven Reasons Why Europe’s Antitrust Cases Against Google Are A Big Deal: “The European Commission (EC) has brought three antitrust cases against Google in the past two years. The first involves Google Shopping, the second Android, and the third AdSense.
“Just last week, WSJ’s ‘Google Faces New EU Complaint Over Android’ reported yet another grievance and noted that opponents are pressuring the EC to act quickly.”
That’s Google using its massive size and weight – to crush and/or crowd out anyone in ANY sector of the economy in which Google participates.
Which is rapidly becoming…nigh every sector of the economy.
Including the allegedly dying retail sector.
Wait: Why would Google expand their retail efforts – if retail is dying? Unless Google realizes the rumors of retail’s death are greatly exaggerated – because Google is accelerating its artificially rapid demise.
Google has ripped wide open holes in the retail sector – and is now themselves filling them.
Oh – and so too is Amazon.
Why Amazon Has No Profits (And Why It Works): “(T)here is the fact that almost 20 years after it was launched, it has yet to report a meaningful profit.”
Amazon has spent the last two decades not getting richer – but instead getting MUCH bigger (Market Cap: $693 billion). So as to be able to drive out competitors in…everything.
But one example – the item that started it all for Amazon: books.
This Book Lists for $26. Amazon Sells It for 40% Less. Is That an Antitrust Problem?
Why Amazon Loses Money On Every Kindle Fire
Which inexorably begat:
Borders (Bookstores) Files for Bankruptcy
How ‘Amazon Factor’ Killed Retailers Like Borders (and Circuit City)
End of the Book for Barnes & Noble?
So retail brick-and-mortar book stores are dead, right? Extinct. Dinosaurs.
Apparently not.
Amazon Will Open Physical Bookstores
Well that’s weird.
Amazon for years and years sells books and their digital readers at a loss.
Driving its brick-and-mortar competitors into bankruptcy.
Then…opens its own brick-and-mortar bookstores.
That’s really weird.
Big Tech companies have gotten incredibly huge – mostly via massive data collection and its massive monetization.
And are now using their massive money and power – to destroy in monopolistic fashion an ever-increasing number of our nation’s and our planets’ economic sectors.
I’m about as anti-antitrust as anyone on this Earth.
But Big Tech is a HUGE problem.
And they’re only getting exponentially worse.
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