Biden slams Big Tech's worst practices in State of the Union address

[midian182]

In brief: President Joe Biden gave the State of the Union address yesterday, setting his sights on some of tech companies' worst practices: excessive data collection, ads that target children, and monopolistic corporations that engage in anti-competitive behavior.

Previous US presidents have had strained relationships with Big Tech—Donald Trump certainly wasn't a fan. Biden made it clear in the SOTU speech that his administration won't take it easy on Silicon Valley's big players.

"It's time to pass bipartisan legislation to stop Big Tech from collecting personal data on kids and teenagers online, ban targeted advertising to children, and impose stricter limits on the personal data these companies collect on all of us," Biden said.

A White House statement expanding on the points made in the speech includes a section on strengthening data privacy and platform transparency for all Americans. It calls for clear and strict limits on tech companies' ability to collect, use, transfer, and maintain personal data, especially sensitive information such as geolocation and health information. There's also a demand for more transparency around the algorithms companies use that "far too often discriminate against Americans and sow division."

This isn't the first time the president has spoken out on this topic. "To keep Americans on their platforms, Big Tech companies often use users' personal data to direct them toward extreme and polarizing content that is likely to keep them logged on and clicking," Biden wrote in a Wall Street Journal op-ed earlier this year. "All too often, tragic violence has been linked to toxic online echo chambers."

Biden has also called for reform of Section 230 of The Communications Decency Act, which prevents internet companies from being liable for third-party content posted on their platforms.

Protecting children online was another major theme of the SOTU address. The fact sheet highlights evidence of social media and other platforms being harmful to young people's mental health, wellbeing, and development. It also mentions "manipulative design techniques" that promote addiction and compulsive behavior among children. Moreover, Biden called for bipartisan support to ban targeted advertising aimed at children.

"Platforms and other interactive digital service providers should be required to prioritize the privacy and wellbeing of young people above profit and revenue in their product design," reads the statement. Back in 2021, Facebook was accused by a whistleblower of caring more about its bottom line than the damage its social media platforms were doing to teens.

Anti-competitive business practices among tech giants was another point Biden raised. The president is seeking bipartisan support from lawmakers in passing antitrust legislation that will stop online platforms from giving their own products an advantage. "Capitalism without competition is not capitalism," he said. "It is exploitation." Congress failed to pass a pair of antitrust bills designed to rein in anticompetitive behavior among big tech companies last year.

As noted by Bloomberg, the speech marked the first time the word "antitrust" had been used in the State of the Union since 1979.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/97546-biden-state-union-address-takes-aim-big-tech.html

 

[WhoCaresAnymore]

Banning TikTok would be a good start.

 

[godrilla]

"This isn't the first time the president has spoken out on this topic". Sums up everything! At the peak of Covid they forgot about privacy in the name of virtue signals. More control for Western capitalism. Let's not forget the FBI had an inside man in Twitter. Imagine 47 years in office and people still believe in fairy tales!

 

[WhoCaresAnymore]

"This isn't the first time the president has spoken out on this topic". Sums up everything! At the peak of Covid they forgot about privacy in the name of virtue signals. More control for Western capitalism. Let's not forget the FBI had an inside man in Twitter. Imagine 47 years in office and people still believe in fairy tales!

There is so much corruption at all levels, I don't think we can hope for anything more than little bits of progress. All we can do is hope that there are some moral people left in politics, and that's a lot of "Hoping".

 

[psycros]

Hilarious. Big Tech conspired with Democrats in government and the media to get this corrupt old dementia patient elected. He won't do jack to impact their bottom lines because he doesn't have a prayer of staying in office without them censoring, spinning and lying on his behalf.

 

[redgarl]

Activision, EPIC and EA should be concerned...

 

[kira setsu]

Activision, EPIC and EA should be concerned...

About what? our govt is weak and inept, these companies will just toss a few bucks at the capital and carry on as usual.

 

[wiyosaya]

Hilarious. Big Tech conspired with Democrats in government and the media to get this corrupt old dementia patient elected. He won't do jack to impact their bottom lines because he doesn't have a prayer of staying in office without them censoring, spinning and lying on his behalf.

Although you may not agree with my wording, I think the issue transcends politics, yet it is an issue, at least as I see it, nonetheless

Note that the last time that there were R's completely in control of the government, that is, the presidency and both the house and the senate, they were unable to come up with a solution, or just plain did nothing, or were unwilling to do anything about it, and here we are - the issue is left for someone else to clean up.

Personally, although I have not yet watched the whole address, however, if this article's quotes are correct, I don't think they go far enough. At the very least, people should be able to opt-in to all this data collection crap, and especially from sites like "My Life" - yes, you can opt-out of My Life, but it is a royal PITA to do so. Further, no site should be able to store your credit card data unless it is required for a subscription of some sort.

Whether you like Biden or not, and whether I liked Trump or not, they both have a point about the BS that big tech is allowed to pull here in the US - and, as I see it, it goes far beyond 1st amendment rights. Big tech has outright admitted using tactics that induce an addiction in order to generate more clicks. IMO, that puts them on the same level as illicit drug dealers.

FYI - The media also pushed Trump's propaganda in the Trump heyday.

 

[AlaskaGuy]

"This isn't the first time the president has spoken out on this topic". Sums up everything! At the peak of Covid they forgot about privacy in the name of virtue signals. More control for Western capitalism. Let's not forget the FBI had an inside man in Twitter. Imagine 47 years in office and people still believe in fairy tales!

Just one? Nine former FBI agents were employed by Twitter.

 

[Avro Arrow]

Paying lip service is easy. I'd be shocked if they actually do something about it.

 

[wiyosaya]

Just one? Nine former FBI agents were employed by Twitter.

I suppose if I were a Twitter user, and if I were a Twitter user engaged in some sort of nefarious activity, I would be concerned that there were FBI agents working at Twitter.

Let's be honest. Anyone on any public forum could be an FBI agent. People engaged in nefarious activity have been known to be dumb enough to post their activity on public forums. I specifically remember such a post from several years back that then elicited a military strike on their headquarters pictured in the post; unfortunately, I am unable to locate the story about the incident.

I'm ready for the conspiracy theory that the sole purpose of said FBI agents was to infringe the 1st amendment rights of "free thinkers", however, I bet the reality of the situation is more along the lines of monitoring suspected terrorist activity in order to prevent some sort of terrorist attack.

As I see it, than an FBI agent was employed by Twitter is a rather large nothing burger.

 

[godrilla]

I suppose if I were a Twitter user, and if I were a Twitter user engaged in some sort of nefarious activity, I would be concerned that there were FBI agents working at Twitter.

Let's be honest. Anyone on any public forum could be an FBI agent. People engaged in nefarious activity have been known to be dumb enough to post their activity on public forums. I specifically remember such a post from several years back that then elicited a military strike on their headquarters pictured in the post; unfortunately, I am unable to locate the story about the incident.

I'm ready for the conspiracy theory that the sole purpose of said FBI agents was to infringe the 1st amendment rights of "free thinkers", however, I bet the reality of the situation is more along the lines of monitoring suspected terrorist activity in order to prevent some sort of terrorist attack.

As I see it, than an FBI agent was employed by Twitter is a rather large nothing burger.

If I worked in the government this is exactly how I would sound we are doing this all in the name of your safety. Left wing extreme terrorists get a green light often times repackaged as right wing extremists by the media arm and echoed by social media troll fact checkers. So the government can disguise as a terrorist in order to overreach because they are protecting us from terrorists .

 

[AlaskaGuy]

I suppose if I were a Twitter user, and if I were a Twitter user engaged in some sort of nefarious activity, I would be concerned that there were FBI agents working at Twitter.

Let's be honest. Anyone on any public forum could be an FBI agent. People engaged in nefarious activity have been known to be dumb enough to post their activity on public forums. I specifically remember such a post from several years back that then elicited a military strike on their headquarters pictured in the post; unfortunately, I am unable to locate the story about the incident.

I'm ready for the conspiracy theory that the sole purpose of said FBI agents was to infringe the 1st amendment rights of "free thinkers", however, I bet the reality of the situation is more along the lines of monitoring suspected terrorist activity in order to prevent some sort of terrorist attack.

As I see it, than an FBI agent was employed by Twitter is a rather large nothing burger.

The FBI created a portal using a cloud server to instruct the powers that be at twitter on who to censor and what to censor including Hunter Biden's laptop in an effort to rig a US Presidential election.

 

[godrilla]

The FBI created a portal using a cloud server to instruct the powers that be at twitter on who to censor and what to censor including Hunter Biden's laptop in an effort to rig a US Presidential election.

Remember what Zuckerberg said about the FBI as well lol terrorism. You don't need a conspiracy theories the FBI is literally that sloppy today.

 

[Manoa]

Talk is cheep, I blieve it when I see it.... p.s: it was BUSH who originally put management engines and platform security processors into all your systems, he come up with the PRISM law, so it was not the tech corporations that eventually allowed it in the first - it was amerika goverment

 

[tacobravo]

When you over regulate industries, you create monopolies....

 

[Ultraman1966]

When you over regulate industries, you create monopolies....

That's interesting, can you give some details on when this happened lately?

 

[Uncle Al]

You know, if they would just roll back the "special protections" on these companies, it would level the playing field again and make them all act more responsible .... or face the consequences that everyone (companies) does.

 

[Avro Arrow]

When you over regulate industries, you create monopolies....

You couldn't be more wrong because capitalism creates monopolies all on its own. Capitalism is a race and sooner or later, someone wins and everyone else loses.

We used to have ATi, 3dfx, Matrox, Orchid, S3, nVidia, Intel and Diamond making GPUs. You think that "over-regulation" is why we only have three left? If you do, you're nuts.

We used to have Western Digital, Seagate, Maxtor, Quantum, Micropolis, Hitachi, Fujitsu, Kalok and Samsung making hard drives. Micropolis, Kalok and Quantum no longer exist, Fujitsu gave up and Maxtor was bought-out by Seagate.

Samsung and Hitachi are only bit-players now while the market is thoroughly dominated by Western Digital and Seagate. This is not because of "over-regulation" either.

That's just in the tech industry. Consider how many fewer airlines, automakers and aircraft manufacturers that there now are than before. Regulation has nothing to do with it.

 

[Eflow]

You couldn't be more wrong because capitalism creates monopolies all on its own. Capitalism is a race and sooner or later, someone wins and everyone else loses.

We used to have ATi, 3dfx, Matrox, Orchid, S3, nVidia, Intel and Diamond making GPUs. You think that "over-regulation" is why we only have three left? If you do, you're nuts.

We used to have Western Digital, Seagate, Maxtor, Quantum, Micropolis, Hitachi, Fujitsu, Kalok and Samsung making hard drives. Micropolis, Kalok and Quantum no longer exist, Fujitsu gave up and Maxtor was bought-out by Seagate.

Samsung and Hitachi are only bit-players now while the market is thoroughly dominated by Western Digital and Seagate. This is not because of "over-regulation" either.

That's just in the tech industry. Consider how many fewer airlines, automakers and aircraft manufacturers that there now are than before. Regulation has nothing to do with it.

Well said, but it's probably going to fall on deaf ears. A good portion of people are convinced that laissez-faire capitalism is perfect, and that any government intervention only makes things worse.

One of the main reasons we have such little competition is due to mergers and acquisitions. Companies often don't grow market share organically by running their own operations efficiently. Instead, they wait for competitors to fall behind and then go through a merger/acquisition to capture easy economies of scale.

We need to stop letting large companies consolidate power.

 

[pcnthuziast]

'Weekend at Biden's' is pretty impressive AI. Albeit a buggy, incoherent, **** show.

 

[lripplinger]

Dementia Joe yelling at the kids to get off his lawn.....

 

[Avro Arrow]

Well said, but it's probably going to fall on deaf ears. A good portion of people are convinced that laissez-faire capitalism is perfect, and that any government intervention only makes things worse.

Those people all live in the USA and have no idea about the world outside of their country's borders. The group to which you refer also includes flat-earthers and anti-vaxxers. These are people who aren't intelligent enough to be mentally flexible and can't personally fathom that there could be a better way. People fear what they don't understand and they hate what they fear. That's why hate is generally concentrated in people who are intellectually "challenged".

One of the main reasons we have such little competition is due to mergers and acquisitions. Companies often don't grow market share organically by running their own operations efficiently. Instead, they wait for competitors to fall behind and then go through a merger/acquisition to capture easy economies of scale.

Yep. This is why "economies of scale" is actually an economic poison. It's what triggers the "race to the bottom" mentality.

We need to stop letting large companies consolidate power.

I'm afraid that horse left the barn over 50 years ago. The only way to solve the problems that capitalism creates is to have a legal limit on just how rich a single person can become. I don't know about you but I wouldn't cry if I wasn't allowed to have more than $10,000,000 in assets. That would still be plenty to aspire to and would prevent a tiny minority holding the vast majority of wealth.

I think that a good analogy would be to think of it as a speed limit. We have speed limits on roads because going faster than them threatens the safety of everyone. In a different way, allowing people to accumulate and hoard too much wealth threatens the economic safety of everyone. We see this in countries like the USA that worship money so much that universal healthcare is somehow considered evil. Even as they believe and tout those lies, people are literally dying because the US economy is only beneficial to the rich.

Meanwhile every other NATO country has had it for decades and wouldn't want to imagine not having it. The baseless nonsense that we hear from people like "tacobravo" only serve to prove just how economically culturally backwards some people have become. Their words are a symptom of an economic disease that is brought about by capitalism.

Just thirty years ago, ridiculous statements like theirs would've been considered insane. The fact that many have bought into this same false narrative only shows how brainwashed by the capitalist rich that so many of limited intelligence have become.

 

[Avro Arrow]

That's interesting, can you give some details on when this happened lately?

Of course not. People who parrot lies like that are either implicit in the lies themselves or they're of such low intelligence that they're easily fooled by liars like Ben Shapiro or Alex Jones. One cannot prove a lie, one can only try to back it up with more lies.

When they're proven wrong, they're too weak and/or childish to eat crow. This tacobravo person has since posted in other threads but has interestingly fallen silent here.

 

[WhoCaresAnymore]

Those people all live in the USA and have no idea about the world outside of their country's borders. The group to which you refer also includes flat-earthers and anti-vaxxers. These are people who aren't intelligent enough to be mentally flexible and can't personally fathom that there could be a better way. People fear what they don't understand and they hate what they fear. That's why hate is generally concentrated in people who are intellectually "challenged".

The anti-vaxxers ended up being the smart ones with COVID. I got the jab and developed AFIB. Even my own doc told me don't get any more COVID vaccines or boosters, natural immunity ended up best on this one.

To call someone who questions big pharma and gov't "unintelligent" is nothing but a sheep. Question everything. If you don't, you are uninformed. Look at things from ALL angles. that's called deductive reasoning, research and intelligent decision making.