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Matt Stoller saying a very Matt Stoller thing.
I'll give him this though, at least he's consistent. Stoller thought it was censorship in 2020 as well.
https://x.com/matthewstoller/status/1846268603181441421
Matt Stoller saying a very Matt Stoller thing.
I'll give him this though, at least he's consistent. Stoller thought it was censorship in 2020 as well.
https://x.com/matthewstoller/status/1846268603181441421
lol no
few freedoms are defended as fiercely as the freedom of businesses to screw over Americans
underrated: a judge has already ruled that Google abused its monopoly, the main thing that remains is the remedy -- up to and possibly including breaking up Google.
The Proposal to Break Up Google Is Finally Here
Three and a half months ago, D.C. district Judge Amit Mehta foundthat Google broke an rust law in monopolizing search and search advertising. In a tightly reasoned 277-page opinion, Mehta’s conclusion was that Google, by controlling the means of distribution of search engines through its ownership of Android and Chrome, as well as contracts with Apple, Samsung, Verizon, and other distributors, prevented rivals from getting access to search markets.
Monopolization trials have two parts, a finding of whether the company broke the law, and then a fight over what to do to remedy the market. After Mehta’s August finding that Google broke the law, we entered the second phase. Mehta asked the government to propose a remedy, and then set up a mini-trial from April 22 to May 2, with the goal of having the case resolved by August at the latest, after which it’ll go to appeal.
On Wednesday, the Department of Justice An rust Division published its proposal for Google’s unlawful behavior, which includes a provision to force a sale of the Chrome browser, and potentially the Android mobile operating system that powers hundreds of millions of phones. While most of the reporting is focused on the ‘break-up’ aspect, there’s much more to it than that. In this piece, I’m going to explain the proposal, the legal environment, and the politics of a Google break-up in the Trump era.
digital redlining/deceptive business practice
Amazon shouldn't charge customers for a service it doesn't provide in their area
District of Columbia says Amazon secretly stopped fast deliveries to 2 predominantly Black ZIP codes | CNN BusinessThe District of Columbia sued Amazon on Wednesday, alleging the company secretly stopped providing its fastest delivery service to residents of two predominantly Black neighborhoods while still charging millions of dollars for a membership that promises the benefit.
The complaint filed in District of Columbia Superior Court revolves around Amazon’s Prime membership, which costs consumers $139 per year or $14.99 per month for fast deliveries — including one-day, two-day and same-day shipments — along with other enhancements.
In mid-2022, the lawsuit alleges, the Seattle-based online retailer imposed what it called a delivery “exclusion” on two low-income ZIP codes in the district — 20019 and 20020 — and began relying exclusively on third-party delivery services such as UPS and the U.S. Postal Service, rather than its own delivery systems.
Amazon says it made the change based on concerns about driver safety.
\“There have been specific and targeted acts against drivers delivering Amazon packages” in the two ZIP codes and the company made the change to “put the safety of delivery drivers first,” Amazon spokesperson Kelly Nantel said in a prepared statement.
“We made the deliberate choice to adjust our operations, including delivery routes and times, for the sole reason of protecting the safety of drivers,” Nantel said. “The claims made by the attorney general, that our business practices are somehow discriminatory or deceptive, are categorically false.”
The District of Columbia’s attorney general’s office alleged the company never told Prime members in the two ZIP codes about the change even though they experienced slower deliveries as a result. Amazon also did not tell new customers about the exclusions when they signed up for Prime memberships, the lawsuit says.
“Amazon is charging tens of thousands of hard-working Ward 7 and 8 residents for an expedited delivery service it promises but does not provide,” District of Columbia Attorney General Brian Schwalb said in a statement, referencing the two areas in the city where Amazon is accused of excluding its speediest deliveries.
“While Amazon has every right to make operational changes, it cannot covertly decide that a dollar in one ZIP code is worth less than a dollar in another,” Schwalb said.
The lawsuit says Amazon has nearly 50,000 Prime members who live in the two ZIP codes, a number that represents nearly half of the population. Prime members in those neighborhoods have ordered more than 4.5 million packages in the past four years, and are more likely to rely on Amazon since they have fewer services and retail stores nearby, the city said. The area is also a notorious food desert.
The district says that in 2021, before Amazon implemented its delivery “exclusion,” more than 72% of Prime packages in the impacted ZIP codes were delivered within two days. But last year, it was only 24%, according to the complaint.
Meanwhile, the district’s lawsuit says Prime members who lived in other parts of the city received two-day deliveries 75% of the time. Amazon was also improving its delivery speeds nationwide.
The NY Amazon teamsters are due to strike any day now
The Injury-Productivity Trade-off HELP Committee ReportA. Key Findings
1) Amazon manipulates its workplace injury data to portray its warehouses as safer than they actually are. Amazon claims that its warehouses are nearly as safe as the industry average—but it does so by cherry-picking data rather than grappling with its uniquely dangerous warehouses. The Committee’s review of the company’s publicly reported data found that Amazon chooses misleading comparisons in an effort to obscure the fact that the company’s warehouses have significantly higher injury rates than both the industry average and nonAmazon warehouses. An analysis of the company’s data shows that Amazon warehouses recorded over 30 percent more injuries than the warehousing industry average in 2023. The Committee also found that in each of the past seven years, Amazon workers were nearly twice as likely to be injured as workers in warehouses operated by the rest of the warehousing industry. Alarmingly, this problem is common across the company’s facilities: more than two-thirds of Amazon’s warehouses have injury rates that exceed the industry average. (Page 17)
2) Contrary to its public claims, Amazon imposes speed and productivity requirements on workers, commonly called “rates.” These requirements force workers to move at an extremely...
(https://s2.q4cdn.com/299287126/files...al-Report.pdf; see Caleb Silver, The Top 25 Economies in the World, INVESTOPEDIA (Oct. 4, 2024), https://www.investopedia.com/insight...-top-economies. 10 Jeff Bezos: Chairman and Founder, Amazon, FORBES, https://www.forbes.com/profile/jeff-bezos/ (last modified Dec. 12, 2024). 11 The Committee’s calculation is based on information from the “Executive Compensation” section of Amazon’s 2024 Proxy Statement. See Amazon, Notice of 2024 Annual Meeting of Shareholders & Proxy Statement 92–104 (2024), https://s2.q4cdn.com/299287126/files...-Statement.pdf. 12 OSHA, DOL, OSHA Penalties, https://www.osha.gov/penalties (last visited Dec. 14, 2024). 13 Committee review of OSHA citations issued to Amazon between February 2022 and February 2024. Citations available on OSHA’s website. OSHA, DOL, Establishment Search, https://www.osha.gov/ords/imis/establishment.html (last visited Dec. 14, 2024). 6)
...fast and often dangerous pace. To ensure compliance with the requirements, Amazon closely tracks workers’ movements throughout each shift. When workers cannot keep up, Amazon uses automated systems to initiate disciplinary procedures. These disciplinary procedures progress in severity and eventually result in termination. (Page 24)
3) Amazon forces workers to move in unsafe ways and to repeat the same movements hundreds and thousands of times each shift, resulting in extremely high rates of musculoskeletal disorders. Although Amazon is aware that these repe ive movements—made over 10- to 12-hour shifts—cause musculoskeletal disorders, the company refuses to take action to protect workers. (Page 43)
4) Although Amazon has safety procedures in place, the company’s required rates make those procedures nearly impossible to follow. Workers report having to regularly bypass safety measures, such as properly using ladders or asking a teammate for help to lift a heavy item, to keep up with the company’s productivity requirements. As a result, workers are forced to choose between following safety procedures and risking discipline and potential termination for not moving fast enough. (Page 55)
5) Amazon’s failure to ensure safe working environments—based in large part on its unsustainable rates and productivity quotas—results in debilitating injuries. Workers reported chronic pain, loss of mobility, temporary and permanent disabilities, and diminished quality of life because of the injuries they experienced at Amazon’s warehouses. (Page 54)
6) Amazon has studied the connection between speed requirements and worker injuries for years, but it refuses to implement injury-reducing changes because of concerns those changes might reduce productivity. In 2020, Amazon launched a multi-team initiative, called “Project Soteria,” to identify risk factors for injuries in its warehouses and to propose changes that would lower injury rates. Although Project Soteria found evidence of a connection between speed and injuries, and made recommendations based on this connection, Amazon did not implement policy changes in response. Project Soteria studied two policies that Amazon had put in place during the COVID-19 pandemic: pausing disciplinary measures for workers who failed to meet speed requirements and giving workers more time off. Project Soteria found that both policies resulted in lower injury risks. Although the policies were intended to be temporary, the Project Soteria team requested they be formally adopted. But Amazon denied the request. In explaining their reasoning, the company’s senior leaders expressed concern about “negatively impacting rate/productivity and the ability to deliver on time to customers.” (Page 71) Amazon leadership then directed the Project Soteria team to switch its focus from reducing injuries to finding ways to “maximize rates/productivity” without increasing injuries. Project Soteria referred to this as the “injury-productivity trade-off.” (Page 77) Two years later, the Project Soteria team again found a connection between speed and injuries, and proposed slowing down the pace of work for workers in the roles and facilities studied. Amazon rejected that proposal. (Page 80) That same year, Amazon leadership directed a different team to audit Project Soteria’s findings—specifically its finding of a connection between speed and injuries. That 7 second team hypothesized that worker injuries were actually the result of workers’ “frailty” and “intrinsic likelihood of injury.” (Page 82) During the Committee’s investigation, Amazon repeatedly characterized this team’s analysis as accurate. In 2021, another Amazon team, called “Project Elderwand,” determined the maximum number of times per shift a warehouse worker in a certain role could do the same physical tasks before increasing the risk of harm to themselves, with the goal of reducing the significant risk of back injuries in this role. The Amazon team also developed a method for ensuring workers did not exceed that maximum number. After conducting tests to assess how implementing that change would impact “customer experience,” Amazon decided not to implement the change to limit workers’ movements. Workers in this role continue to far exceed the maximum number that Amazon identified, risking injuries that Amazon could reduce. (Page 90)
7) Amazon actively discourages injured workers from receiving outside medical care, putting injured workers further at risk. Amazon has multiple internal practices that operate to delay workers from receiving needed medical care and force workers who need medical care to return to work too soon, exacerbating their injuries. (Page 97)
8) Workers who need short-term or permanent workplace accommodations for work related injuries and disabilities experience significant challenges obtaining appropriate accommodations. In addition, Amazon’s accommodations processes do not appear to involve an interactive process. (Page 126)
9) Amazon terminates workers injured in the company’s warehouses who are on approved medical leave. These terminations are often the result of failures by the company’s time-tracking systems. As a result, workers are left without access to Human Resources and other resources and are forced to recover from injuries without income or support. (Page 136)
10) Amazon deflates the injury numbers it records for federal regulators. Staff at Amazon’s on-site first aid centers, called “AMCARE,” often delay workers from being referred to outside medical providers. Those same first aid providers regularly treat workers in-house instead of referring them to outside medical providers. These tactics effectively reduce the number of injuries that Amazon must record and disclose to the federal government. The Committee’s review of Amazon’s internal data also raises serious questions about whether the company accurately records injuries. (Page 117)
Amazon workers fight back
https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/20...ristmas-seasonThousands of Amazon employees in the United States are set to go on strike during the busy Christmas period after union officials accused the retailer of refusing to enter negotiations for better pay and conditions.
The Teamsters union said on Wednesday that warehouse workers would join the picket line in cities including New York, Atlanta and San Francisco from 6am Eastern Time (11:00 GMT) on Thursday in the largest strike against the company in US history.“
“If your package is delayed during the holidays, you can blame Amazon’s insatiable greed. We gave Amazon a clear deadline to come to the table and do right by our members. They ignored it,” Teamsters General President Sean M O’Brien said in a statement.
“These greedy executives had every chance to show decency and respect for the people who make their obscene profits possible. Instead, they’ve pushed workers to the limit and now they’re paying the price. This strike is on them.”
Teamsters, one of the biggest unions in North America, claims to represent about 10,000 Amazon workers among the retail giant’s roughly 800,000-strong US workforce.
Amazon disputes the union’s claim to represent any of its employees and says its conduct is illegal.
this is the FCC case against Amazon
the spending freeze and mysteriously cancelled building leases are starting to bite Trumplandia's legal capacity -- DOGE is throttling regulation
https://www.npr.org/2025/03/14/nx-s1...kly-backtracksOn a a call about the government's major lawsuit against Amazon, a federal lawyer began making startling disclosures.
The Federal Trade Commission is in a "dire resource situation," FTC lawyer Jonathan Cohen said earlier this week, asking the federal judge to delay the trial.
Some people on the case team have resigned by accepting the DOGE team's "Fork In the Road" offer, he said, and hiring is frozen. Agency staff have to vacate FTC offices because "something has happened" to the lease and they might move to the former USAID facilities. Their travel card limits were cut to $1. And they have to buy legal transcripts at the cheapest and slowest rate, which can mean weeks of waiting for do ents to properly prepare for court deadlines.
"The agency is experiencing extremely severe resource shortfalls in terms of both money and personnel," Cohen told U.S. District Judge John Chun in Seattle on Wednesday, according to a transcript of the call.
The case at stake is one of the FTC's most high-profile lawsuits, against Amazon. The Biden administration had accused the retail giant of "tricking" people into paying for Prime memberships that were purposefully hard to cancel, which the company denies. The trial had been expected to start in September.
Amazon's lawyer argued against rescheduling, saying he'd seen "no indication" of trouble at the FTC, and that lawyers change up on cases "DOGE or no DOGE." Judge Chun asked the FTC to put the delay request in writing.
But within hours, federal lawyers reversed course.
"I was wrong," Cohen wrote to the judge in a letter. "The Commission does not have resource constraints and we are fully prepared to litigate this case. Please be assured that the FTC will meet whatever schedule and deadlines the court sets."
...kickin' their ass up so high they can use it for a hump.
on the side of elite oligarchs like Bezos and Musk
...In fervent hopes I get enough left over to see us to the end.
"us"?
Wife & I.
The Justice Department, in a case argued by the Biden an rust division, defeats Google again, with the judge ruling that Google monopolized key adtech markets.storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...
and will be again
By the end of the year, Delta plans for 20% of its ticket prices to be individually determined using AI, president Glen Hauenstein told investors last week. Currently, about 3% of the airline’s flight prices are AI-determined, triple the portion from nine months ago.
Over time, the goal is to do away with static pricing altogether, Hauenstein explained during the company’s Investorhttps://fortune.com/2025/07/16/delta...-for-a-ticket/“This is a full reengineering of how we price and how we will be pricing in the future,” he said. Eventually, “we will have a price that’s available on that flight, on that time, to you, the individual.”
He compared AI to “a super analyst” who is “working 24 hours a day, seven days a week and trying to simulate… real time, what should the price points be?”
While the rollout would be a “multiyear” process, he said, initial results “show amazingly favorable unit revenues.”
Delta accomplishes this pricing through a partnership with Fetcherr, a six-year-old Israeli company that also counts Azul, WestJet, Virgin Atlantic, and VivaAerobus as clients. And it has its sights set beyond flying. “Once we will be established in the airline industry, we will move to hospitality, car rentals, cruises, whatever,” cofounder Robby Nissan said at a travel conference
Facebook cashes in on scams it hosts
A blockbuster Reuters report by Jeff Horwitz analyzes leaked internal do ents that reveal that: 10% of Meta's gross revenue comes from ads for fraudulent goods and scams, and; the company knows it, and; they decided not to do anything about it, because; the fines for facilitating this life-destroying fraud are far less than the expected revenue from helping to destroy its users' lives:
https://www.reuters.com/investigatio...ow-2025-11-06/
some details: first, the company's own figures estimate that they are delivering 15 billion scam ads every single day, which generate $7 billion in revenue every year. Despite its own automatic systems flagging the advertisers behind these scams, Meta does not terminate their account – rather, it charges them more money as a "disincentive." In other words, fraudulent ads are more profitable for Meta than non-scam ads.
Meta's own internal memos also acknowledge that they help scammers automatically target their most vulnerable users: if a user clicks on a scam, the automated ad-targeting system floods that user's feed with more scams. The company knows that the global fraud economy is totally dependent on Meta, with one third of all US scams going through Facebook (in the UK, the figure is 54% of all "payment-related scam losses"). Meta also concludes that it is uniquely hospitable to scammers, with one internal 2025 memo revealing the company's conclusion that "It is easier to advertise scams on Meta platforms than Google."
Internally, Meta has made plans to reduce the fraud on the platform, but the effort is being slow-walked because the company estimates that the most it will ultimately pay in fines worldwide ads up to $1 billion, while it currently books $7 billion/year in revenue from fraud. The memo announcing the anti-fraud effort concludes that scam revenue dwarfs "the cost of any regulatory settlement involving scam ads." Another memo concludes that the company will not take any pro-active measures to fight fraud, and will only fight fraud in response to regulatory action.
Meta's anti-fraud team operates under an internal quota system that limits how many scam ads they are allowed to fight. A Feb 2025 memo states that the anti-fraud team is only allowed to take measures that will reduce ad revenue by 0.15% ($135m) – even though Meta's own estimate is that scam ads generate $7 billion per year for the company. The manager in charge of the program warns their underlings that "We have specific revenue guardrails."
even if a fraudster does violate Meta's terms of service, the company will not act. Per Meta's own policies, a "High Value Account" (one that spends a lot on fraudulent ads) has to accrue more than 500 "strikes" (adjudicated violations of Meta policies) before the company will take down the account.
Meta's safety staff grew so frustrated by the company's de facto partnership with the fraudsters that preyed on its users that they created a weekly "Scammiest Scammer" award, given to the advertiser that generated the most complaints that week. But this didn't actually spark action – Reuters found that 40% of Scammiest Scammers were still operating on the platform six months after being flagged as the company's most prolific fraudster.
of course, there is one way that Meta could dramatically reduce fraud: eliminate its privacy-invasive ad-targeting system. The top of the Meta ad-funnel starts with the nonconsensual dossiers Meta has assembled on more than 4 billion people around the world. Scammers pay to access these dossiers, targeting their pitches to users who are most vulnerable.
This is an absolutely foreseeable outcome of deeply, repeatedly violating billions of peoples' human rights by spying on them. Gathering and selling access to all this surveillance data is like amassing a mountain of oily rags so large that you can make billions by processing them into low-grade fuel. This is only profitable if you can get someone else to pay for the inevitable fires:
https://locusmag.com/feature/cory-do...-of-oily-rags/
https://fintechbusinessweekly.substa...m-transactionsThe scope of the problem is difficult to overstate. A UK regulator found that, in 2023, Meta products were involved in a jaw-dropped 54% of all payment-related scams, or more than double all other social platforms combined.
DHS wants to combat disinformation (i.e., bad press) and strongarm online platforms to censor stories they don't like
where my Twitter files folks at?
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/n...ews-about-ice/
on a lighter note
old tech, same bull
Trump wants to censor it
censorship, coercive speech codes and punitive lawsuits seem to be thematic in Trump 2.0
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