Zephyr Teachout, a Democratic candidate for New York attorney general, said she will work with others to launch a major antitrust investigation against Facebook and Google if she is elected.
Tech companies are to blame for dominating online advertising and taking revenue from newspapers and publishers, Teachout said as she stood in front of the New York Daily News office in Manhattan, Washington Post reported. She spoke a day after the New York Daily News announced layoffs and reduced its newsroom by half.
Today at noon in front of The Daily News, I will be laying out a plan of action: using antitrust laws to bust up and regulate the digital ad duopoly of Facebook and Google that are decimating local news.
— Zephyr Teachout (@ZephyrTeachout) July 25, 2018
While local news declined by 10% in just three years, FB and Google made records profits off of digital advertising–FB makes 40% profit margin. Money is being made off of content, but not by the content producers, but by digital ad tech.
— Zephyr Teachout (@ZephyrTeachout) July 26, 2018
Fox News is in NY. I realize the NY AG is not the FCC, but there must be some way to revoke their propaganda license. They must account for the deliberate damage they do to our increasingly enfeebled Democracy that they imperil with the dissemination of lies & malicious slander.
— Owen Flanagan (@firehorse1200) July 25, 2018
Wishful thinking is not a meaningful plan of action. The legacy news business model based on regional scarcity and controlling the means of distribution is dead. You could close Google and FB tomorrow and the legacy business model of newspapers will still be hopelessly broken.
— J. S. Greenfield (@xfields) July 26, 2018
She’s one of a growing barrage of politician’s voices calling for the breakup of tech giants’ hold on the economy.
In June, Minnesota Rep. Keith Ellison called on the federal government to break up Facebook and other monopolies, tweeting that the U.S. economy “needs real antitrust enforcement to prevent monopolies like Facebook from killing competition, buying influence, and handing out our personal data.”
Our economy needs real antitrust enforcement to prevent monopolies like Facebook from killing competition, buying influence, and handing out our personal data. To restore competition and prevent abuse, the FTC should break up Facebook and other monopolies.https://t.co/S3q504VXCT
— Keith Ellison (@keithellison) June 8, 2018
Young people are moving away from Facebook. Let the market deal with them.
— Dave Thompson (@DaveTMpls) June 8, 2018
I despise Mark Zuckerman’s subterfuges but the whole point of facebook (and other social media sites) is to connect and reunite everyone you know. It’s the one kind of monopoly that’s a GOOD thing.
— Unstable Genius (@lisasavy) June 8, 2018
I'm not a big fan of Facebook, but could you explain what its breakup would look like? Honestly curious.
— End the NRA (@soundbytesback) June 9, 2018
Not just tech monopolies though, all the 'Bigs' — pharma, chemical, agricultural, financial, etc. Enforce the damn anti-trust laws.
— Tigerlore (@Tigerlore88) June 8, 2018
Like Teachout, Ellison also has his eye on an attorney general job — him, in Minnesota — so he can challenge the policies of President Donald Trump, he said.
Trump has long called for more taxes on Amazon, saying in January that the company’s dominance is hurting American retailers. On Monday, Trump tweeted that Amazon deserves to be investigated for antitrust claims. It could have been unfavorable news reports that set Trump off again, CNBC reported:
Trump railed against the e-retailer and The Washington Post … in a series of tweets Monday morning, claiming the newspaper has “gone crazy” against Trump in the months since Amazon “lost the Internet Tax Case in the U.S. Supreme Court.”
Google and Facebook’s power in the advertising market represents a “democratic crisis” for journalism, Teachout said in an interview Wednesday. These are some of the things Teachout said she can or will do, anti-trust wise, if elected, according to Washington Post:
“People are making money off of local news,” Teachout said. “But it isn’t the journalists, and it isn’t the publishers. It’s Facebook and Google.”
Freakin' New Yorkers. Can't you just accept that nobody cares about the stupid newspaper anymore?
— Wall Street (@WallSt) July 25, 2018