I am setting up this blog to address a number of technical and legal issues that, over the long run, can affect the freedom of media newbies like me to speak freely on the Internet and other low-cost media that have developed in the past ten years.
Since the 1990s I have been very involved with fighting the military "don't ask don't tell" policy for gays in the military, and with First Amendment issues. Best contact is 571-334-6107 (legitimate calls; messages can be left; if not picked up retry; I don't answer when driving) Three other url's: doaskdotell.com, billboushka.com johnwboushka.com Links to my URLs are provided for legitimate content and user navigation purposes only.
My legal name is "John William Boushka" or "John W. Boushka"; my parents gave me the nickname of "Bill" based on my middle name, and this is how I am generally greeted. This is also the name for my book authorship. On the Web, you can find me as both "Bill Boushka" and "John W. Boushka"; this has been the case since the late 1990s. Sometimes I can be located as "John Boushka" without the "W." That's the identity my parents dealt me in 1943!
House Judiciary Committee holds anti-trust hearings of big-tech
The House Judiciary Committee today conducted 5-hour
hearings, “Online Platforms and Market Power: Examining the Dominance of Amazon,
Apple, Facebook, and Google".
At one point Zuckerberg joked that he would not buy Facebook.
Ad Robertson summarizes the hearings for The Verge
(Vox) as picked up on my iPhone by Smart News. The Wall Street Journal has a little booklet
with numerous articles, each about an individual Company. CNN has a detailed report by Brian Fung.
Cicilline (D-RI) asked if Google’s scraping of reviews
to sell more ads amounted to “conflict of interest”.
James Sensenbrenner (R-WI) asked Zuckerberg (speaking
from home) why Facebook had deleted a post about hydroxzychloroquine, and Zuckberberg
had to correct him, saying it was Twitter.
Matt Gaetz (R-WI) asked if Google would refrain from
following some employee demands and not refuse police contracts.
Cicilline questioned Bezos on Amazon’s conflicts of
interest with some booksellers and third party sellers.
There were questions over whether Facebook has
threatened to clone the products of a company while trying to acquire it –
leading to questions about Instagram.
There were questions about Airbnb’s “virtual travel” products,
which shows that tech companies are trying to adapt to the travel restrictions
with new online services, some of which might be gratuitous.
Rep. Gohmert was ordered to put his mask on. Pelosi will
create a mandatory mask policy in Congress.
(Wikipedia image of the House of Representatives, click for CCSA attribution.)
(Note: I am having some problems with links and the new Blogger editor. I may have to put them at the end of a post sometimes, and may have to use the old editor for a while.)
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