quinta-feira, 30 de julho de 2020

Why the tech giants may suffer lasting pain from their Hill lashing / “Chegámos aqui à maneira americana”. Gigantes tecnológicas usam patriotismo para justificar domínio


Congress's historic tech hearing suggests antitrust crackdown could come soon

Analysis: heated exchanges raise concern over anticompetitive behavior as chair warns of companies’ ‘monopoly power’

Kari Paul in San Francisco
Thu 30 Jul 2020 02.47 BSTLast modified on Thu 30 Jul 2020 02.49 BST

After hours of grilling top tech executives in a historic antitrust hearing on Wednesday, US lawmakers suggested unprecedented antitrust enforcement might be on the horizon.

In his closing remarks, Representative David Cicilline, a Rhode Island Democrat, said evidence put forward in the investigations and testimony showed just how entrenched the tech companies were in the US economy and day-to-day life.

“These companies, as they exist today, have monopoly power,” said Cicilline, chair of the House judiciary committee’s antitrust subcommittee. “Some need to be broken up, all need to be properly regulated and held accountable. This must end.”

It is not clear what antitrust actions may come out of the hearings, which were heated at times and ranged in topic from claims of anti-conservative bias among social media platforms to unlawful acquisitions and the spread of misinformation. The hearings were conducted partially in person on the Hill and partially over video messenger amid the coronavirus pandemic.

The questions
Much of the questioning of Mark Zuckerberg focused on Facebook’s history of acquiring or copying main features of competitor platforms. Jerry Nadler of New York argued in his questioning that Facebook’s acquisition of Instagram had all the hallmarks of an antitrust violation.

“This is exactly the type of anticompetitive acquisition the antitrust laws were designed to prevent, and this should never have happened in the first place. It should never have been permitted to happen. It cannot happen again,” he said.

In one particularly intense exchange, Pramila Jayapal, a Washington state Democrat, asked the CEO if Facebook had ever “threatened to clone the products of another company while also attempting to acquire that company”.

Zuckerberg responded that it had not. Jayapal followed up by reading evidence that suggested the Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom felt he had no option but to sell his platform to Facebook.

“Facebook is a case study, in my opinion, in monopoly power,” Jayapal said. “Because your company harvests and monetizes our data, then your company uses that data to spy on competitors and to copy, acquire, and kill rivals. Facebook’s very model makes it impossible for new companies to flourish separately, and that harms our democracy, it has harms mom and pop businesses and it harms consumers.”

Criticisms of Amazon focused primarily on third-party sellers on the online retail platform. Lucy McBath, a Georgia Democrat, played emotional testimony from a woman who said her bookstore on Amazon was throttled by the company’s anti-competitive behavior when she was delisted from the site.

McBath also questioned Apple over allegations the company has removed competitors’ apps from its App Store. She said creators of screen time management apps alleged that Apple removed their apps from the store right after launching its own, similar app. Apple’s CEO, Tim Cook, denied the allegation.

“The timing of the removals seems very coincidental,” McBath pointed out. “If Apple wasn’t attempting to harm competitors in order to help its own app, why did Phil Schiller, who runs the App Store, promote the Screen Time app to customers who complained about the removal of rival parental control apps?”

Sundar Pichai of Google was targeted with questions about the company’s advertising methods, data practices, and use of other companies’ content for its own pages. Jayapal asked Pichai how Google could be anything but a monopoly if it controlled more than 90% of the global online search market.

Cicilline accused Google of stealing content from small businesses, calling the practices “anticompetitive”. He described Google as a “walled garden” that traps users.

“I disagree with this characterization,” the CEO responded, noting that Google “supports” 1.4 million small businesses.

The non-answers
For as much ground as was covered on Wednesday, the tech executives also gave many non-answers. Zuckerberg initially claimed not to know about Facebook’s controversial “Research” app and later had to amend his statement on the record.

Bezos frequently claimed not to know Amazon policies on data collection and other issues he was asked by Congress members. The failure to answer or give details on Amazon’s actions on Wednesday revealed Bezos “seemed to be unaware of the widespread harms that Amazon inflicts”, said Dania Rajendra, director of Athena, a non-profit group of activists against Amazon’s centralized power.

“Today’s non-answers from Jeff Bezos prove that he lacks the will or competence to change Amazon through his own leadership,” Rajendra said. “It is now up to the subcommittee to take what they’ve learned and issue a strong set of recommendations to meaningfully check Amazon’s out-of-control power. The future of our economy and our democracy depend on it.”

Republicans take on Silicon Valley’s politics
Meanwhile, many Republican lawmakers used the hearing as an opportunity to air grievances about what they perceive as bias against conservatives in the tech industry.

The stage was set for such questioning early in the day, when Jim Jordan, a Republican of Ohio, dedicated his opening statements not to antitrust topics but to concern over bias.

“I will just cut to the chase – big tech is out to get conservatives,” he said.

Several lawmakers asked Zuckerberg about a viral video that, without offering proof, suggested hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for coronavirus and had been taken down from Facebook. Zuckerberg reiterated that Facebook’s policies “prohibit content that will lead to imminent risk of harm”, including unproven health treatments.

Later in the hearing, Jordan asked each executive what he thought of “cancel culture” and the idea that differing viewpoints are now shot down or discouraged. All executives agreed that a diversity of viewpoints is important.

Republicans’ insistence on returning to the topic of anti-conservative bias led to some clashes with Democratic lawmakers. A verbal scuffle broke out when Representative Mary Gay Scanlon opened her questioning with a sharp criticism of Congressman Greg Steube and other Republicans.

“I’d like to redirect your attention to antitrust law rather than fringe conspiracy theories,” she said.

TECHNOLOGY

Why the tech giants may suffer lasting pain from their Hill lashing

Lawmakers investigating Facebook, Amazon, Google and Apple made it clear that their allegations of antitrust abuses come with a lengthy paper trail.

Tech CEOs
This combination of 2019-2020 photos shows Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, Apple CEO Tim Cook, Google CEO Sundar Pichai and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. On Wednesday, the four Big Tech leaders answered for their companies’ practices before Congress at a hearing by the House Judiciary subcommittee on antitrust. | Pablo Martinez Monsivais, Evan Vucci, Jeff Chiu, Jens Meyer/AP Photo

By NANCY SCOLA
07/29/2020 10:36 PM EDT

Wednesday's much-anticipated antitrust hearing subjected four of the tech industry's most powerful CEOs to hours of aggressive questioning by Republicans and Democrats alike.

But it also may have revealed something far more lasting: A Congress that has largely soured on Silicon Valley is beginning to figure out how to hold it to account, compiling piles of documents that could back up allegations that the industry's biggest companies aren't playing by the country's competition rules.

That could be the most lasting implication for Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg, Amazon's Jeff Bezos, Google's Sundar Pichai and Apple's Tim Cook, whose companies are being increasingly challenged by lawmakers in Washington and beyond.


Want the full play-by-play? Check out POLITICO’s live coverage. With that, here are five top takeaways of what we learned Wednesday.

1) Democrats came ready, and with plenty of evidence
The House antitrust subcommittee has spent a year on this investigation — collecting emails and confidential presentations, locating chat records, and reassuring small competitors that it’s safe to tell them of their stories of the Big Four. And some of the subcommittee’s top Democrats came prepared with that evidence, in a coordinated effort to poke holes in Zuckerberg's, Bezos', Pichai's and Cook’s contentions that they compete fully in the letter and spirit of U.S. antitrust law.

Take Rep. Pramila Jayapal’s (D-Wash.) back-and-forth with Zuckerberg over whether he’d threatened Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom before eventually buying the company for a billion dollars in 2012. Jayapal pulled up a chat between Systrom and an investor in which the Instagram co-founder floated the possibility that Zuckerberg “will go into destroy mode if I say no.”

When Zuckerberg disputed the congresswoman’s characterization of those events, Jayapal swung back with a classic bit of congressional theater: “I'd like to remind you that you’re under oath.” Underscoring the point, the subcommittee published a cache of its investigative materials, including the full Systrom chat log, midway through the hearing — a way of extending the five-hour-plus hearing’s shelf-life even longer.

In the same vein, committee members hit Bezos with emails illuminating Amazon's motivation for buying the smart doorbell company Ring; wrote Bezos in that correspondence, "To be clear, my view here is we are buying market position — not technology."

2) Republicans are more interested in tech bias than antitrust
Jim Jordan
Rep. Jim Jordan speaks during a House Judiciary subcommittee hearing on antitrust on Wednesday in Washington. | Graeme Jennings/Pool via AP

The hearing got off to a bang when Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) brought out his outdoor voice to recite a litany of alleged examples of anti-conservative bias, including on the part of Twitter, whose CEO Jordan had made a show of attempting to invite to the hearing.

Perhaps anticipating Jordan would have a go at hijacking the hearing, was primed to shut him down: He quickly swatted away Jordan’s attempt to enlist a fellow Republican not on the subcommittee to question the CEOs on their threats to “freedom.”

That put to rest any notion that the tech executives were facing a unified bipartisan front ready to drill down on antitrust abuses.

Jordan later tried again, attempting to go to the ropes with Google CEO Pichai over whether his company would play fair during the 2020 election. Pichai seemed somewhat befuddled by Jordan’s line of questioning, eventually promising that, yes, Google would play things neutral. Pichai was let off the hook when the right to question passed to Rep. Mary Gay Scanlon (D-Pa.), who opened with a shot at "fringe conspiracy theories."

Jordan objected, loudly, but the hearing moved on.

Republicans did get traction here and there. Rep. Kelly Armstrong (R-N.D.), for example, got into a robust exchange with Pichai on the ins-and-outs of how the company’s ad tools interact with the YouTube platform it owns. When Pichai said the company’s approach was more sensitive to users' data-security concerns than other models, Kelly shot back that Google was using privacy as “a cudgel to beat down the competition.”

But even Rep. Ken Buck (R-Colo.), who has recently carved out a lane as a thoughtful conservative critic of Silicon Valley, touched on how Amazon engages with competitors before veering off onto a round of getting each of the CEOs to commit to not sell products produced using “slave labor.”

And while the hearing produced few of the full-out tech gaffes that Congress has become known for, top subcommittee Republican Jim Sensenbrenner notched one when he asked Zuckerberg about why presidential son Donald Trump Jr.'s social media account was recently taken down for a short time over a controversial hydroxychloroquine video. But that controversy involved Trump's Twitter account, not Facebook. (Zuckerberg sidestepped the platform misidentification, using it as a moment to point out that Facebook is pointedly pro-“free expression.”)

3) Facebook’s still vulnerable
Zuckerberg was the target of perhaps the day’s toughest questioning, not simply from Jayapal but other from Democrats who homed in on Facebook’s billion-dollar acquisition of Instagram in 2012. Their premise: that Zuckerberg saw the photo-sharing platform not as a neat startup that would round out Facebook's own image-sharing tools but a potential existential threat — one whose absorption, then, potentially violated U.S. competition law.

New York Democrat Jerry Nadler, the chairman of the full Judiciary Committee, laid into Zuckerberg on the topic, again using internal communications in making his case. Nadler pointed out that according to documents in the subcommittee’s hands, Zuckerberg was prompted to dig out his checkbook because he worried that “Instagram could “meaningfully hurt us without becoming a huge business,” and that by buying the still-small company, “what we’re really buying is time.”

Buying up a competitor simply so it will stop competing is potentially a no-no under U.S. antitrust law, Nadler pointed out, to which Zuckerberg responded that the Federal Trade Commission knew his thinking about Instagram way back in 2012, and those antitrust enforcers still signed off on the deal. But Cicilline was unpersuaded, telling Zuckerberg that "the failures of the FTC in 2012 of course do not alleviate the antitrust challenges that the chairman described.”

The shorter version: Just because that one corner of the federal apparatus approved the deal some eight years ago doesn’t mean Zuckerberg is out of the woods. And deals that are made can be unmade.

Facebook has bought scores of companies, of course, but Instagram is different. The visual-first platform, hugely popular in its own right, is key to Zuckerberg’s vision for the future of Facebook — especially as it’s a way of attracting a Facebook-phobic younger audience that otherwise is flocking to the Chinese-owned upstart TikTok. Washington peeling Instagram away from Zuckerberg’s empire might be unlikely, but it’s also a future that the CEO isn’t eager to contemplate. And the House antitrust subcommittee made plain that it’s a possibility it wants Zuckerberg to worry about.

4) Jeff Bezos took lots of heat, and didn't always seem ready
This was, somewhat amazingly, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos’ first ever time testifying before Congress, despite the enormous wealth and power he enjoys. (When Bezos was sworn in today, he was ranked No. 1 on Forbes’ list of the world’s richest people, with $180 billion under his control. As a point of comparison, the wealthiest member of House of Representatives, Rep. Greg Gianforte (R-Mont.), was worth about one-thousandth that.)

And for a time, it looked like it would be a easy day for Bezos. Seemingly because of technical difficulties with his Cisco Webex feed, Bezos wasn’t called on for questions until long after the hearing that begun. But when the technical details were sorted out, Bezos was in for it.

Some of the toughest queries came from Cicilline himself, on a topic that the chairman has been pursuing for many months now: whether Amazon uses the data of independent sellers on its platform to figure out how to best sell its own products. (The committee has questioned whether another Amazon witness misled the panel on this very point a year ago.) Bezos declined repeatedly to dig into the details, often arguing that he simply didn’t know the relevant information, even though it's common for CEOs to prep thoroughly for these sort of high-profile Q&As.

After Bezos responded "I can't answer that question yes or no" when Jayapal asked whether Amazon has ever used information extracted from the experiences of its on-platform independent sellers to plan its own offerings, Cicilline followed up incredulously: “You said that you can’t guarantee that the policy of not sharing third-party seller’s data with Amazon’s own line [of products] hasn’t been violated. You couldn’t be certain. Can you please explain that to me?”

Said Bezos: “We are investigating that, and I do not want to go beyond what I know right now.”

At another point in the hearing, Bezos said he was unfamiliar with a startup that was featured in the opening anecdote of a Wall Street Journal story on the company's dealings with smaller competitors that appeared last Thursday.

Don’t expect Cicilline to let this one go. He’s known to keep his teeth dug into topics that have grabbed his attention, and he’s made clear that he takes strong offense to how Amazon has handled this key question.

5) Congress still has no clear bipartisan antitrust agenda
Cicilline has said from the start of his tech investigation back last summer that he’s eager to keep it a bipartisan affair, and somewhat remarkably he has mostly met that goal. Still, it became clear Wednesday that the subcommittee's Republicans are not on board with making major changes to antitrust law to counter Silicon Valley’s power — a stalemate that could give the beleaguered tech giants a legislative win by default.

Some GOP lawmakers also explicitly rejected the idea that, as the oft-heard saying goes, “big is bad.”

“I have reached the conclusion that we do not need to change our antitrust laws,” said Sensenbrenner, the top Republican on the subcommittee, who would be a crucial ally for any bipartisan drive to make transformational changes. “They’ve been working just fine. The question here is the question of enforcement of those antitrust laws.”

That still leaves Cicilline a plenty-big lane to have some impact on the country’s competition policy, though he will to navigate carefully to make sure that pre-election bickering doesn't rip apart the policy recommendations he has said he’ll release by the end of the year.

On the other hand, the November election could yield him another path to victory, by offering an antitrust legislative roadmap to the next presidential administration — if that president is Joe Biden.

Leah Nylen and John Hendel contributed to this report.

“Chegámos aqui à maneira americana”. Gigantes tecnológicas usam patriotismo para justificar domínio

A Amazon, Google, Facebook e Apple juntaram-se, por videoconferência, para tentar convencer o Congresso norte-americano que não representam monopólios tecnológicos.

Karla Pequenino 29 de Julho de 2020, 16:58 actualizado a 29 de Julho de 2020, 23:37

A Amazon, Apple, Facebook e Alphabet (dona da Google) têm demasiado poder. Foi essa a conclusão dos congressistas norte-americanos após uma audiência que se prolongou durante mais de cinco horas.

Os líderes das quatro grande tecnológicas norte-americanas prestaram esclarecimentos ao Congresso norte-americano durante a tarde de quarta-feira. Objectivo: mostrar aos congressistas, com poder para separar o império das quatro gigantes, que não usam os dados, ferramentas e informação que têm para monopolizar o mercado e impedir novas empresas de florescerem nas áreas do comércio, navegação e comunicação online. Não convenceram.

“Estamos aqui hoje porque não é possível uma escolha [além das quatro empresas]”, começou por resumir o congressista norte-americano David Cicilline, que presidiu a sessão. “Estas empresas têm demasiado poder”, sublinhou Cicilline, explicando que é difícil navegar na Internet sem ter de usar uma de muitas ferramentas das quatro gigantes norte-americanas. “As pessoas estão presas com más opções”, concluiu.


Desde Junho de 2019 que o subcomité do Congresso norte-americano, responsável por assuntos relacionados com práticas monopolistas, está a investigar as tecnológicas por suspeitas de prática anticoncorrencial.

Nos discursos de abertura, os presidentes executivos das gigantes refutaram as acusações. Um dos argumentos utilizados é que se não forem empresas norte-americanas — como o Facebook, a Google, a Amazon e a Apple — a inovarem, essa inovação virá de potências estrangeiras como a China. Em comum, todas as empresas apelaram ao patriotismo, notando que trabalham para criar empresas americanas, em solo norte-americano, que respeitam os valores fundadores dos EUA.

“O Facebook é uma empresa de sucesso”, reconheceu o presidente executivo do Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, no seu discurso de abertura que pode ser lido na integra no site do Congresso norte-americano — “Chegámos aqui à maneira americana.”

Respostas vagas
A Google e o Facebook foram de longe as empresas que receberam mais atenção. A Google foi criticada por manipular o tráfego do motor de busca para destacar os seus produtos e serviços, e o Facebook foi repetidamente acusado de comprar empresas rivais (como o Instagram) antes que se tornassem uma ameaça.

Os reguladores perguntaram à Apple sobre a vantagem que as ferramentas desenvolvidas pela empresa têm na App Store, a loja de aplicações da Apple. E a Amazon foi questionada sobre o facto de usar dados de empresas rivais na sua plataforma de comércio online para desenvolver os seus próprios produtos, e foi fustigada por permitir alguns produtos falsificados no site.


Senhor Zuckerberg, será que isto não sugere que a sua plataforma é tão que grande que nem com as políticas certas é possível conter conteúdo que pode ser mortífero?”
David Cicilline, congressista

Frequentemente, as respostas dos líderes das tecnológicas foram vagas, alegando falta de informação sobre os documentos citados pelos congressistas. “Não posso responder sim ou não à pergunta”, respondeu, a certa altura, o presidente executivo da Amazon, Jeff Bezos, sobre a possibilidade da empresa usar informação de vendedores na sua plataforma para promover os seus próprios produtos. Bezos insistiu que a empresa tem políticas contra esse tipo de estratégias mas disse que é impossível “garantir que as políticas nunca foram violadas.”

Vários congressistas republicanos também aproveitaram a sessão para questionar se o Facebook e o Google suprimem visões e opiniões de direita (algo que as empresas negaram). Outros reprovaram aquelas gigantes por permitirem a proliferação de informações falsas sobre a pandemia de covid-19.

O último ponto foi utilizado para justificar as desvantagens no tamanho e poder de empresas como o Facebook. “Senhor Zuckerberg, será que isto não sugere que a sua plataforma é tão que grande que nem com as políticas certas é possível conter conteúdo que pode ser mortífero?”, questionou David Cicilline, que deu por encerrada a sessão cinco horas após o começo.

Zuckerberg foi ao Parlamento Europeu para pedir desculpa - e pouco mais

“É evidente, para mim, que estas empresas têm o poder de monopólios e têm de ser responsabilizadas e reguladas”, resumiu o congressista. “O controlo que têm do mercado permite-lhes fazer aquilo que querem para esmagar negócios independentes e expandir o seu poder. Isto tem de terminar.”

Nas próximas semanas, o subcomité do congresso norte-americano vai elaborar um relatório sobre a investigação feita com recomendações para as empresas.

Defesas e acusações
Jeff Bezos: “A Amazon tem de ser escrutinada"
Apesar da falta de atenção dos congressistas durante as primeiras duas horas da audiência foi Jeff Bezos, presidente executivo da gigante do comércio online Amazon, quem deu início aos discursos de abertura. Nos últimos meses, a empresa de Bezos tem beneficiado do facto de o isolamento social empurrar vendas online. Desde o início do ano, as acções da empresa subiram 73% e a fortuna de Bezos passou de 74 mil milhões de dólares a 189,3 mil milhões de dólares em apenas seis meses.​

O líder da Amazon afirmou que compreende a atenção dos congressistas. “Eu acredito que a Amazon tem de ser escrutinada”, admitiu. “Devemos escrutinar todas as grandes instituições, sejam grandes empresas, agências governamentais, ou agências sem fins lucrativos.” A responsabilidade da Amazon, disse, “é garantir que passam o escrutínio com ‘nota máxima’.”

Sundar Pichai: Google investe no “futuro da America"
O presidente executivo do Google, Sundar Pichai, foi o segundo a falar. Contrariamente à Amazon, a Google não é inexperiente a enfrentar acusações de abuso de poder. Nos últimos três anos, a empresa foi multada três vezes pela Comissão Europeia por práticas anticoncorrenciais com várias das suas ferramentas, somando oito mil milhões de euros em coimas. A multa mais recente, em 2019, foi de 1490 milhões de euros. Esta quarta-feira as atenções voltam-se também para a forma como a empresa destaca as suas ferramentas e produtos no motor de busca e nos telemóveis Android.

No discurso de abertura, Sundar Pichai, começou por sublinhar que a Google “vê com orgulho o número de pessoas que escolhem os seus produtos e serviços.” Para Pichai, os investimentos da empresa na criação de novas ferramentas e produtos (90 milhões de dólares nos últimos cinco anos) são um “investimento no futuro da América”. “Através destes investimentos, as nossas equipas de engenheiros estão a ajudar os EUA a solidificar a sua posição como um líder global em tecnologias como inteligência artificial, carros autónomos e computação quântica”, explicou Pichai, que acredita que a Google constrói produtos que “aumentam oportunidades.”

Tim Cook: Apple não domina em nenhum mercado
Tal como a Amazon, o presidente executivo da Apple, Tim Cook, também elogiou o escrutínio dos congressistas. “A competição promove a inovação”, insistiu Cook, dizendo que a Apple não trabalha para criar um monopólio.

A história do iPhone foi usada como exemplo: apesar de a Apple redefinir a forma como as pessoas vêem e usam os telemóveis em 2007, com o lançamento do primeiro iPhone, hoje em dia o aparelho faz parte de um ecossistema muito competitivo que inclui empresas como a Huawei, Samsung e LG. “A Apple não tem uma quota de mercado dominante em nenhum mercado onde opera”, destacou Cook.

Mark Zuckerberg: Facebook compra rivais para as ajudar
O presidente executivo do Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, concluiu os discursos de abertura. Nos últimos anos, a empresa realizou várias audiências com representantes políticos e reguladores norte-americanos e europeus devido ao escândalo Cambridge Analytica, em 2018, em que se descobriu que uma consultora britânica usou dados de 87 milhões de utilizadores do Facebook, sem autorização, para orquestrar campanhas políticas personalizadas em todo o mundo.

Esta quarta-feira, porém, o foco foi o poder e domínio da tecnológica norte-americana no campo das redes sociais e plataformas de mensagens. Além do Facebook, a empresa de Mark Zuckerberg é dona da rede social Instagram e dos sistemas de mensagens Messenger e WhatsApp, somando dois mil milhões de utilizadores mensais em todo o mundo.

“Ao comprar o Instagram a empresa deixou de ser um competidor, para se tornar numa empresa que nós podemos ajudar a crescer”, explicou Zuckerberg. O argumento, porém, não convenceu os congressistas.

Para Zuckerberg, as mudanças e aquisições do Facebook reflectem evolução e não monopolismo. “Há muito que acredito que um dia, como é normal na nossa indústria, um produto vai surgir e substituir o Facebook. Quero que sejamos nós a criá-lo”, insistiu Zuckerberg, alertando que se a inovação não vier dos EUA, virá da China.

tp.ocilbup@onineuqep.alrak

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