
White House Drafts Order to Probe Google, Facebook Practices - Jerry2
https://www.bloombergquint.com/business/2018/09/22/draft-order-for-trump-would-crack-down-on-google-facebook#gs.vJ6cFkE
======
orev
I’m not seeing the connection here between “antitrust” and the alleged
discrimination against conservative views. How does alleged discrimination
become an antitrust issue, other than as a cudgel/threat by the government to
try to punish these companies?

While I do think there are probably some monopoly issues with these tech
companies, this seems more like a government witch hunt against them because
the current administration doesn’t like what they’re doing, not because they
are truly concerned about the possible monopolies.

~~~
craftyguy
> How does alleged discrimination become an antitrust issue

It doesn't.

> other than as a cudgel/threat by the government to try to punish these
> companies?

It's exactly this.

~~~
tptacek
In fact, the EO appears to be explicit about being retaliation, since it
mentions "platform bias" in its reasoning. "Platform bias" isn't an antitrust
concern, and, in fact, the President has no authority to "de-bias" private
companies.

~~~
charmides
>"Platform bias" isn't an antitrust concern, and, in fact, the President has
no authority to "de-bias" private companies.

This is a very common refrain and I would agree completely with this if we
didn't live in a society where Facebook, Twitter and YouTube dominated the our
communication channels. I wish that we had a neutral way (like email) to reach
a large audience and that it wasn't owned by three or four private companies.

~~~
tptacek
It would seem to be difficult in the extreme to wield antitrust law against
Twitter, which is embattled, competes bitterly with Facebook, and holds no
monopoly on anything.

~~~
abraae
Twitter seems to hold somewhat of a monopoly on a certain kind of shouty,
instantaneous social interaction.

------
olliej
This sounds like they want the equal representation policies that the
Republican Party got rolled back in the 80s (ruled unconstitutional iirc).
It’s what allowed the rise of partisan “news”. It seems like any “equal
exposure” policies would hit the same issues.

That said the primary “imbalanced exposure” seems to be due to evicting people
who simply spend their time attacking minorities, attack equal rights, and
promoting violence towards anyone that they dislike. For whatever reason the
Republican Party seems to have decided that those people represent
“conservative” views that private companies should have to support.

~~~
patrickg_zill
i. e. : People who are exercising their right to free speech.

~~~
craftyguy
'Right to free speech' does not exist outside the government. It never has,
unless there's an amendment to the first amendment that no one is telling us
about..

~~~
anonymousab
When people talk about free speech outside of government affairs, they are
generally referring to an idealized universal human right or ideal, rather*
than the US constitutional right.

~~~
craftyguy
> an idealized universal human right or ideal

There is no such thing. Implementing/requiring 'free speech' for consumers of
a service (e.g. facebook) means that now suddenly the service and its
employees lose _their_ right to free speech. If the service's management wants
to be biased towards one political 'party', they have a right to do that, but
if they suddenly are forced to be unbiased then they have effectively lost
that right. See how you cannot have 'universal free speech'?

~~~
AlexB138
This is a nonsensical interpretation of free speech. Censoring someone is not
an exercise in the censorers free speech. Free speech is a negative right,
meaning for it to exist others must not stop you from speaking.

In your argument, whoever has power would just censor whatever they don't like
and claim they're exercising their free speech. You're literally arguing that
censorship is free speech. Straight out of a totalitarian play book.

~~~
dvtrn
_whoever has power would just censor whatever they don 't like and claim
they're exercising their free speech._

Have you ever heard someone claim "freedom of speech is not freedom from
consequences"? [1]

Seems like an increasingly popular mechanism to publicly litigate the affair
in public, muzzle someone from the comparative out-group while insulating
themselves from all consequences one might faces themselves from their own
petard.

I'll admit there's probably some merit to it-if you applied enough context and
nuance to it. Problem is the types of people I observe online deploying this
conceit very rarely do so in good faith and rarer still express any
willingness to appreciate context or nuance.

[1] [https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/01/10/when-
satire...](https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/01/10/when-satire-cuts-
both-ways/freedom-of-speech-not-freedom-from-consequences)

~~~
AlexB138
Indeed.

As you say, there is merit to the argument. Social censure is often the
appropriate response to repugnant ideas. I wouldn't invite an extremist to a
party, for instance, but I wouldn't, and shouldn't, seek to ban them from
speaking in public.

And again, as you said, these argument are almost always used in bad faith.
There is a breed of political extremism, popular in our industry, that is very
against free speech and they have turned these bits of tortured logic into
memes (in the cultural sense). The problem I personally have with it is the
two-faced misrepresentation. Attempting to avoid outright saying they don't
believe in free-speech, while at the same time advocating censoring any speech
that doesn't conform to their ideas. While there's still an argument to be
made against it, I at least respect the logical consistency of those saying "A
private platform can censor political speech their leaders disagree with if
they want to".

~~~
fzeroracer
You can believe in free speech while advocating for moderation. There has been
many attempts over the past few years to turn the free-speech argument into
one against moderation, because in order to moderate a platform it
necessitates censoring opinions.

A lot of these arguments remind me a lot of the days when I used to play
Garry's Mod. Where people claim admin abuse, censorship etc for being banned
or told to go away as a result of ruining the game for other people.

~~~
AlexB138
Agreed, and if I came off as arguing otherwise I misspoke. What you can't be
is for free speech and for "moderation" of only speech you disagree with,
which is simply bias censorship and what is often happening.

~~~
fzeroracer
The flaw with that is moderators and companies have to make a determination
for speech they disagree with. Not all sites ban people in the same way for
violent threats, and similarly all sites view inflammatory or derogatory
speech in different ways.

At some point in the equation there will be a value judgment made in terms of
what breaks the rules. People banned by that moment will cite censorship and
demand to be heard (see: the various subreddits banned by Reddit) while people
wanting that content removed will celebrate. Making the argument into one
purely about censorship ends up removing the nuance and reasoning for why
someone was banned, which is why when people talk about conservative voices
being banned by twitter, they often ignore the damage and harm Alex Jones for
example has been responsible for to many families involved in school shootings
or the various conspiracies he peddles.

------
mc32
This looks like this draft order is pretty wide-ranging. It covers opinion
manipulation (speech) as well as the more meaty anti-trust aspect of the above
companies.

Whether this administration or another has the will, remains to be seen, but
it seems clear that these advertising companies up to this point have
collected user data with impunity and use it with impunity.

I may be mistaken but I think people will eventually wake up from their
indifference to this in the US and demand congress pass comprehensive data
collection and usage reform.

~~~
tptacek
It can be _written_ as wide-ranging as they want it to be, but the Executive
Branch has only the authority to enact laws passed by Congress, so unless
there's some "opinion manipulation" statute none of us have heard of, the
administration is going to be stuck with stuff like antitrust.

I don't know about Facebook, but Google has been preparing for antitrust
investigations for over a decade.

~~~
patrickg_zill
Yes, and the Constitution is very clear that only gold and silver are to be
used in payment of debts.

But here we are...

Edit for the search-deprived:
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contract_Clause](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contract_Clause)

~~~
Erem
That clause describes the power of the individual states, not the federal
government. And unless you've seen Oklahoma trying to pay their debts in OK
Bucks I think it holds true today.

The federal government is allowed to use whatever means they legislate to pay
their debts.

~~~
patrickg_zill
So do those who win state contracts get paid in gold and silver?

~~~
tptacek
You can literally just Google "gold and silver clause" to see that this is a
Wesley Snipesian conspiracy theory. You might just as productively argue about
gold-fringed admiralty flags here.

------
w_t_payne
How would such a probe be carried out?

Are they going to start reviewing source code?

------
tptacek
Any order like this --- retaliation for perceived political slights --- is
chilling. But try to remember that every administration makes a spectacle of
writing "Executive Orders", and they usually mean less than people think they
do.

In the US system, the President cannot simply make new laws or take arbitrary
actions by fiat. With the exception of powers extending from those enumerated
to the Executive in the Constitution, the President can only administer laws
passed by Congress.

In reality, the President is a sort of CEO of a giant conglomeration of
federal agencies, all of which are animated by statutes. What you generally
see in these EOs is reprioritization and, in some cases, requested changes to
rulemaking --- rulemaking being "places where Congress explicitly left it up
to the Executive to figure out how to manage a particular law".

So: unless there's some "opinion manipulation" statute none of us have heard
of (unlikely, because of that pesky 1A), this is really just Trump retaliating
against political enemies by threatening antitrust investigations. That
squares with what Bloomberg is reporting, and Bloomberg appears to be the only
outlet that has seen a copy of the EO.

~~~
chasing
> In reality, the President is a sort of CEO of a giant conglomeration of
> federal agencies...

This is such an awful comparison. I wish people would stop making it. A CEO
and the President (should) operate in very different ways with a very
different set of constraints with a very different set of desired goals. They
might both sit at the top of large organizations, but the Executive Branch of
the US government and a company are two very, very, VERY different beasts.

------
Mountain_Skies
Perhaps companies like Twitter, Google, and Facebook are actively trying to
incite regulation. Social media companies have become beholden to a relatively
small group of very loud activists who have frightened the companies into
compliance with their political goals. They're afraid of standing up to these
noise makers and have a legitimate difficulty in deciding how to best moderate
the content on their platforms in a way that alienates the fewest users.
Government regulation would tie their hands, allowing the companies to claim
they're powerless to manipulate content in the way that activists demand it be
manipulated. In such an environment where all companies are legally obliged to
treat content the same way, boycott threats would be meaningless. Likely tools
would arise to allow individual users to have better control over what content
they do and do not see instead of insisting on the platform censoring content
for them and imposing those standards on everyone else.

------
nonbel
People just need to use other services.

1) DuckDuckGo is great for search.

2) Protonmail is great for email.

3) gab.ai instead of twitter (heard about it but never used it; I guess
twitter has some use...).

4) Voat instead of Reddit (it seemed to offer the same capabilities when I
visited it a bit).

5) Facebook, nothing like this should even exist but I'm sure there is some
alternative out there.

~~~
chasing
Have you, uh, looked at gab.ai and voat lately? Because my lord, they might
attempt to copy some of the technical aspects of Reddit and Twitter, but their
communities are something else entirely, to put it mildly...

~~~
nonbel
See here:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18047264](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18047264)

------
acidburnNSA
I have been frequently and respectfully conversing with a relative who's a
full-on Breitbart-parotting die-hard Trump supporter for the past year or so.
He was throwing around a leaked TGIF video (of Sergey Brin explaining that he
finds the election offensive) and saying that this confirms that Google is
part a Democratic Party front that's indoctrinating children and teachers
against conservative viewpoints.

He then went on to spend the next 2 weeks parrotting Breitbart's article after
article about how they use foreign workers and that they're building a Chinese
government spy system and that the government needs to step in and stop them
and on and on. It was fascinating.

We discussed the government's role in regulating private companies and it was
clear that the philosophy is totally tribal. Break up companies run by
liberals, even if there's no demonstrable liberal bias of the service, by any
means necessary. Political philosophy be damned. It's quite a time indeed,
though I wonder if it's ever really been any different.

~~~
fzeroracer
I've seen similar chilling arguments be made that Alex Jones of all people is
a proper conservative voice and deserves to be heard. All of these attacks on
google, facebook etc are not attempts to actually fix the huge monopolies they
control but a clear partisan attack because they believe they're being
persecuted or censored by these tech companies.

These are the same people that claim to be anti-regulation and anti-big
government, yet this is one of the more obvious examples of overreach yet.

~~~
nonbel
>"These are the same people that claim to be anti-regulation and anti-big
government"

Is it? From some other comments in this thread it sounded like "those people"
already built alternatives for themselves (voat and gab.ai). Or did you mean
"republicans"?

------
charmides
The Trump administration's critical stance on the tech giants is one of the
very few things coming from them that I support, even though their actions
here appears to be rooted in self-interest and self-preservation only (just
like everything else they're doing).

I hope that this probe will lead to some antitrust action that will be
continued by the next administration.

------
prolikewh0a
From the article itself:

>The document doesn’t name any companies.

Poor title, poor article. It's nothing but speculation based on prior Trump
tweets, mixed with the main topic of the document: antitrust.

~~~
dguaraglia
You mean based on public-record statements by the President of the United
States? Sounds like a pretty solid basis to base "speculation" on.

------
curo
This seems like rich fodder for a tech debate: Trump's Twitter bans were
deemed unconstitutional, how does that apply to the companies themselves? Is
Google's discussion to change algos after the immigration ban just? Should
antitrust laws protect not just consumer rights & competition, but voter
rights & viewpoint diversity? How do you build a better algorithm for
political threads?

Instead, even on HackerNews, you just see partisan criticism, minor viewpoint
suppression, etc. This is ground zero for fixing these problems.

------
billfor
They should be classified as common carriers.
[https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/47/202](https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/47/202)

------
jim_bailie
It's ironic and tragically funny that all the comments in support of this
article's premise and of the successes of the current administration are being
grayed out.

~~~
ignoramceisblis
HN is profoundly biased in the comments that appear--and those that are
"squelched". It's pathetic.

Example:

1 hour ago, user "remarkEon" posted something that was flagged, and then
removed entirely, but before it was removed, the children comments gave hint
that it included essentially: 'Many people with conservative views in general
are being suppressed; it is not limited to people who speak out e.g. against
minorities.'

I assume this because, the comments replying to it were essentially bashing it
as if the onus was on remarkEon to provide examples substantiating his/her
claim. As if the concept is so unfathomable.

For example, a child comment from user "notatoad" 1 hour stated (in full):

> Can you give even a single example of how the parent comment is a gross
> misrepresentation?

> Who is a conservative personality that's been silenced by a tech company but
> has never attacked minorities, equal rights, or promoted violence?

An early reply to that from user "itbeho" stated (in full):

> Just today...

> [https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-09-22/james-woods-
> suspen...](https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-09-22/james-woods-suspended-
> twitter-over-satirical-meme-could-impact-election)

"itbeho" was further grayed out. For providing exactly a requested example
substantiating the statement that remarkEon was alluding to. And an example
from /just today/.

All posters who were critical of the parent poster "remarkEon" were "in full
view"\--with black comments.

As with tech in general, we need particular users and/or moderators of HN to
stop suppressing true statements of fact. Especially when there is a systemic,
clear bias against a specific "political flavor" to the statements.

This is precisely the issue discussed in the linked article. Peoples'
perspectives of reality are being warped by what is shown to them--and what is
hidden from them. Certain facts are being suppressed, which creates an
extremely distorted view of reality, e.g. real events and the rate at which
they occur.

~~~
krapp
You can turn showdead on to read remarkEon's comment, it wasn't removed.

It said, verbatim, "The kind of gross misrepresentation you’re doing right now
is part of the reason why Trump has found justification to do this kind of
thing in the first place."

It wasn't flagged because it went against HN's political bias, it was flagged
because it was tedious, partisan and uncivil, and threads like this are
destined to become cesspools anyway.

~~~
malvosenior
The parent comment it's replying to says:

> _That said the primary “imbalanced exposure” seems to be due to evicting
> people who simply spend their time attacking minorities, attack equal
> rights, and promoting violence towards anyone that they dislike. For
> whatever reason the Republican Party seems to have decided that those people
> represent “conservative” views that private companies should have to
> support._

How is that also not "tedious, partisan and uncivil"? Not only is it not
flagged, it's upvoted.

~~~
krapp
The trope of "x (thing liberals/leftists/feminists/democrats have done) is the
reason for Trump's election" has become a tired cliche at this point, and
RemarkEon's comment was just that and a dismissal without any evidence or
support for their argument. The parent was partisan, yes, but at least it
presented an argument.

Maybe it shouldn't have been flagged, but it deserved to be downvoted.

Whether downvoted comments deserve to be edited out is another matter - I've
been complaining about that for years but Hacker News is never going to change
that. Unfortunately there's no way to downvote someone here without also
censoring them globally, and HN is designed so that only a few downvotes have
a massive effect on readability.

~~~
ignoramceisblis
You're being hypocritical.

The parent comment by "olliej" presented absolutely no argument for their
statements:

> That said the primary “imbalanced exposure” seems to be due to evicting
> people who simply spend their time attacking minorities, attack equal
> rights, and promoting violence towards anyone that they dislike.

> For whatever reason the Republican Party seems to have decided that those
> people represent “conservative” views that private companies should have to
> support.

Again, remarkEon was simply pointing out the fact that "olliej" _presented no
argument_, and was giving another tired example of grossly misrepresenting
conservatives. "olliej"'s comment literally was evidence for remarkEon's
comment. A comment on the pathetic hypocritical state of discourse today.

~~~
krapp
You know what? You're right. The more I look at them, the more similar they
seem in tone and quality.

~~~
ignoramceisblis
Not that my opinion should hold much weight, but: I truly appreciate your
candor.

(As a general statement,) I, and many others, only wish to have reasonable,
rational discussions. It's impossible to do that when there exist people who
seek to subvert those constructive discussions by simply branding people--who
they very likely know next to nothing about--and then inferring all sorts of
(incorrect) beliefs from those brands (e.g. "conservative"). We would all
benefit from not jumping to conclusions. And from having access to the truth,
undistorted.

~~~
krapp
I don't think people are trying to subvert constructive discussion, rather,
people have a low bar for what they consider constructive for certain
subjects.

~~~
ignoramceisblis
I agree. I also feel that the majority of people have a low bar for that, like
you say; I don't suspect most people consciously try to subvert constructive
discussion, but I do know that's a tactic employed by a small minority.

------
velox_io
I don't think there's been such powerful organisations since the East India
Company.

~~~
ecshafer
When Google and Facebook start having personal armies, navies, and courts then
I think it will be fair to compare them to the East India company. It's
premature to even use them in the same sentence until then though.

~~~
presscast
"Power" doesn't necessarily imply "military power".

~~~
blantonl
Yes it does, because until these organizations have the power to take things
by physical force, it's not even in the same league.

~~~
rdtsc
What are things? Is money a thing? Can PayPal decide to lock your account and
not give you your money back? What about selling your data to other companies?
Are those things. You bought media on Google or Amazon and then they close
your account because you criticized them on social media. Is that media
"things"? See it is a bit more nuanced in today's world than just saying well
they didn't knock on your door and took your microwave away, so qualitatively
a different situation.

~~~
CydeWeys
It's trivial to not use PayPal, though. They don't have a monopoly on money.
They can't come take all of your possessions and land like the militarized
colonial-era private companies could. It's not remotely comparable.

If you want a better modern day example than Silicon Valley tech companies,
look at Chiquita. They have had paid paramilitary forces committing murder to
protect their interests during this millennium. Until PayPal is literally
killing people in order to steal their money and property, you can't say that
they are remotely similar.

This is not a defense of PayPal by the way; I dislike them for the same reason
you do. But perspective is important.

------
HillaryBriss
> _The document instructs U.S. antitrust authorities to “thoroughly
> investigate whether any online platform has acted in violation of the
> antitrust laws.” It instructs other government agencies to recommend within
> a month after it’s signed actions that could potentially “protect
> competition among online platforms and address online platform bias.”_

Back in 2014, Google outspent Goldman Sachs in campaign donations.
[https://www.rt.com/usa/197104-google-usa-political-
campaign/](https://www.rt.com/usa/197104-google-usa-political-campaign/)

I wonder how much Google will spend in 2020.

~~~
lern_too_spel
Goldman Sachs's policy opponents don't spend much, so Goldman Sachs itself
doesn't need to spend much on lobbying to achieve its policy objectives.
Opponents of Net Neutrality were heavy spenders in 2014.
[http://amp.timeinc.net/time/3677301/google-lobbying-
comcast](http://amp.timeinc.net/time/3677301/google-lobbying-comcast)

