Last Wednesday, the US House of Representatives held a hearing. The world’s most powerful tech CEOs - Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook, Jeff Bezos of Amazon, Tim Cook of Apple and Sundar Pichai of Google – were summoned to Washington.
The overall purpose of the hearings was to determine whether the companies had too much market power. For instance, the treatment on startups was the subject over the violations of antitrust law. In response to the
buyout of Instagram as a possible strategy to take out a nascent competitor. Zuckerberg said that, in fact, Instagram’s success had never been guaranteed and was the result of Facebook’s investment in the product. None of the startups can beat the giants on the traditional money game, monopoly. In the country like U.S. where capitalism are heavily taken a place, the question on the big companies dominating market, seems contradictory to me.
On Friday, Donald Trump said that he planned to sign an executive order to ban TikTok in the US. The video sharing service has 80 million active monthly users. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the action would be taken "with respect to a broad array of national security risks that are presented by software connected to the Chinese Communist Party”. It has begun by banning Huawei products including 5G, these action is part of the political conflict between U.S. and China. Trump said that “enough“. No more silly meme? No more funny dance? No more teaching the Asian granny English by reading international brands names like Prada and Versace?
According to Pompeo, the action on TikTok will be taken in “coming days”. There is Ahead of the U.S. presidential election in November, these incidents seemed to me, is the government rein in tech companies not to intervene in the democratic system. Bunch of politicians in the state on the platform creating contents and engaging young people. Hope these talents are immigrating to Twitter.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-53625344
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/30/podcasts/the-daily/congress-facebook-amazon-google-apple.html
