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Posted on 09/05/2018 5:27:13 AM PDT by E. Pluribus Unum
Social Media and search giants are being hit with a class-action lawsuit from a pro-Trump group who claims that they conspired against Conservatives.
Freedom Watch, which promotes right to privacy among other causes, claims that Facebook, Google, Twitter and Apple violated antitrust laws.
“Our YouTube account on Google never gets above 49 thousand,” said Larry Klayman, the group’s founder, during an interview on FOX Business’ “Varney & Co.” on Tuesday. “It goes up, it goes down. That’s been going on for about six months,” he claimed while adding that other conservative groups and interests are also experiencing the same issues.
Klayman, a former antitrust lawyer who helped break up AT&T’s telephone monopoly during the Regan administration, also alleged the tech companies collaborated to restrain trade.
“There’s also a concept of conscious parallelism,” he said. “When companies move in tandem in parallel fashion that do the same thing that can be restraint of trade. So we believe there’s an actual agreement between these leftist owned media giants like Google, Twitter, YouTube etc.,” he explained.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxbusiness.com ...
Klayman will lose again.
I think as individual businesses they would have been within their right to set whatever rules they wanted.
However, when they conspired together it is no different then when the Oil or transportation barons of the late 1800 conspired to put others out of business.
We are in new territory but I believe they are going to regret the decision to become political and not remain a neutral in the cultural war.
Not defending Apple here, but they don’t seem to occupy the same space tech-wise that Google, Twitter, and Facebook do.
It seems like three oranges and an Apple. It didn’t say in the article what Apple has done to be in that group...any idea?
I don’t know what you’ve been smoking but Judicial Watch has been the most effective conservative activist organization in history.
Their exposure of deep state as well as a host of other governmental corruption through FOIA etc. is legendary.
Fraud in a public company is pretty serious.
Specifically, Apple removed certain InfoWars podcasts from iTunes for "hate speech" violations.
Ah. Thanks. Now I see the drift of it.
They’re all members of the World Wide Web consortium which is like the internet maffia... you either sell to them or you die on the vine because they will restrict access to their user bases...
Yes...I had completely overlooked their iTunes censorship. I get it now.
“I don’t know what you’ve been smoking but Judicial Watch has been the most effective conservative activist organization in history”
True now, less so when Klayman was there.
THIS IS FREEDOM WATCH. Not the same group.
Yay!!!!
It’s. About. Time.
Good... This is what needed to happen and every individual who has been wronged by these companies needs to add their name to the plaintiff list.
“Klayman will lose again.”
Rains a lot at your place, huh?
Collusion - secret or illegal cooperation or conspiracy, especially in order to cheat or deceive others.
I’ve been watching them for years. For a long time it seemed no one was paying attention to them treating them like a small, of no consequence news agency.
I’m so glad to see them getting respect and attention.
From the Freedom Watch site...
https://www.freedomwatchusa.org/freedom-watch-files-class-action-complaint-against-google-f
I think as individual businesses they would have been within their right to set whatever rules they wanted.
~~~
First of all, that is a sentiment, not legal grounds. If google set whatever rules they wanted that negatively affected public safety, such as favoring results that promoted the use of opioids and methamphetamines, I would guess they’d be in a lot of hot water.
Secondly, this seems to be based on anti-trust concerns. Not an easy type of case to win, at all! However, I believe it has merits. If you have one (or a very small number) who are gatekeepers to what equates to a public utility, you’ve got big problems.
The big leap here, for a lot of people, is equating influence on the flow of information with a public utility. If you don’t see it that way, you’re not alone. In fact, you’re probably like most people. However, most people just want to turn things on when they need them, and don’t much care about how they work, as long as they do, and just because they are getting search results back from google, it doesn’t mean they are being served in their own best interests, because they have no possible way to determine how they wouldn’t be.
The reason I believe anti-trust approach will fail is because, if we shut down Google today, people would still be able to search the internet. If we shut down Twitter and Facebook, the vast majority of people who use them would still be able to find a way to set up new communication with the people they formerly used those service for.
The real problem here, in my opinion, is transparency. Google can hide their algorithms based on Trade Secret laws. Twitter and Facebook can bury in bureaucracy their methods for taking exact control over their content away from users, and nobody is doing anything to stop it.
Additionally, Google and Apple have removed the app for Gab.ai from their stores. Gab is viewed as a less-restrictive version of Twitter and it's where many people who have gotten kicked off Twitter for their one-sided TOS enforcements go to post.
This is noteworthy because there's a popular argument here that if people don't like Twitter, they should just go to Gab without seemingly understanding that the same internet giants who are trying to silence conservative voices from the popular sites are also working to make the less popular sites inaccessible as well.
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