Guardian: Break up Facebook (and while we’re at it, Google, Apple and Amazon)

Big tech has ushered in a second Gilded Age. We must relearn the lessons of the first, writes the former US labor secretary

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‘How long will it be before Facebook uses its own data and platform against critics?’ Photograph: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Editor’s note:  We reference Robert Reich’s article but we also note that both Reich and the Guardian more than softpeddle on the truth.  Google and Facebook aren’t the same as Amazon.  Amazon isn’t involved in censoring news nor is it run by intelligence agencies as are Google and Facebook.  Amazon doesn’t censor anyone nor does Apple.

Moreover, Apple and Amazon didn’t help rig the election on behalf of Deep State stooge Trump and his cabal of criminal monsters such as Mohammed “what’s his name,” the head chopping, bone saw/plastic bag murderer.

No, Google runs military contractors through its Jigsaw/Idea Groups assassination teams, Facebook provides ISIS with its comm’s and Reich does have a good heart, we credit him with this, he just spends too much time sitting on his ass.



Last week, the New York Times revealed that Facebook executives withheld evidence of Russian activity on their platform far longer than previously disclosed. They also employed a political opposition research firm to discredit critics.

America’s Gilded Age of the late 19th century began with a raft of innovations – railroads, steel production, oil extraction – but culminated in mammoth trusts owned by “robber barons” who used their wealth and power to drive out competitors and corrupt American politics.

We’re now in a second Gilded Age – ushered in by semiconductors, software and the internet – that has spawned a handful of giant hi-tech companies.

This consolidation at the heart of the American economy creates two big problems.

America responded to the Gilded Age’s abuses of corporate power with antitrust laws

First, it stifles innovation. Contrary to the conventional view of a US economy bubbling with inventive small companies, the rate at which new job-creating businesses have formed in the United States has been halved since 2004, according to the census.

A major culprit: big tech’s sweeping patents, data, growing networks and dominant platforms have become formidable barriers to new entrants.

The second problem is political. These massive concentrations of economic power generate political clout that’s easily abused, as the New York Times investigation of Facebook reveals. How long will it be before Facebook uses its own data and platform against critics? Or before potential critics are silenced even by the possibility?

read more at UK Guardian

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2 COMMENTS

  1. “Amazon doesn’t censor anyone…”

    Gotta disagree with you on this one. In the same way that Google and Facebook have become effective monopolies in their field, Amazon has become an effective monopoly bookseller.

    By, based on political criteria, they refuse to carry titles, and by banishing titles that they formerly carried (the ol’ memory hole), they are denying people access to information.

    If that’s not censorship, then what would you call it?

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