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From Vox

Google has ruled the online ad marketplace for years. Now it faces 10 state attorneys general over its dominance.

A group of 10 state attorneys general filed suit against Google on Wednesday, alleging anti-competitive practices related to its ad technology. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, a Republican, led the investigation into Google and announced the lawsuit in a video posted to Twitter a few hours before the lawsuit was filed.

“Google repeatedly used its monopolistic power to control pricing, engage in market collusions to rig auctions in a tremendous violation of justice,” Paxton said in the video.

The lawsuit, which is one of several antitrust cases Google now faces, alleges that Google engaged in a wide variety of anti-competitive behavior to create and maintain its monopoly power in digital ad markets and keep out competitors. It also alleges that Google and Facebook illegally agreed not to compete with each other. This latest legal action is happening after Google and other big tech companies like Facebook have for years been accused of employing anti-competitive practices.

“In addition to representing both the buyers and the sellers of online display advertising, Google also operates the largest exchange AdX,” reads the lawsuit, which was filed by Republican attorneys general in Arkansas, Idaho, Indiana, Mississippi, Missouri, North Dakota, South Dakota, Utah, and Kentucky, as well as Texas. “In this electronically traded market, Google is pitcher, batter, and umpire, all at the same time.”

This is akin to the New York Stock Exchange also controlling the buying and selling of stocks, according to Sally Hubbard, director of enforcement strategy at the Open Markets Institute and author of Monopolies Suck.

“They’re getting information that they shouldn’t have if the market is supposed to be properly functioning,” Hubbard told Recode. “We don’t tolerate this in other sectors.”

Google didn’t respond to a request for comment. Google spokesperson Julie McAlister told the New York Times that “Attorney General Paxton’s ad tech claims are meritless” and that the company “will strongly defend ourselves from his baseless claims in court.”

This lawsuit is the first to focus on Google’s dominance in ad tech. More specifically, it says that Google uses its market power to “extract a very high tax of [redacted] percent of the ad dollars otherwise flowing to the countless online publishers and content producers like online newspapers, cooking websites, and blogs who survive by selling advertisements on their websites and apps.” In turn, these businesses pass costs on to consumers, causing them harm, according to the lawsuit.

Last year, Google brought in nearly $162 billion in revenue, the vast majority of which came from advertising. Google controls nearly a third of all digital ad spending in the US, according to eMarketer. Since its tools dominate all parts of the ad process, Google is said to have unfair visibility that allows it to maintain its dominance, according to the Wall Street Journal’s Keach Hagey and Vivien Ngo, who last year explained how Google’s ad tech works and why publishers and rivals have long complained about it.

This lawsuit is the latest in a series of antitrust suits against Big Tech, including one filed against Google in October by the Justice Department and 11 states. The DOJ alleged that Google used its search dominance to preserve its other monopolies, including advertising. A bipartisan lawsuit regarding Google’s monopolization of specialized search like maps and reviews is expected soon from attorneys general from Colorado and Nebraska. Earlier this month, the Federal Trade Commission and 48 states filed a suit against Facebook, saying that its acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp amounted to anti-competitive practices that harm consumers.

Meanwhile, Paxton, the Texas attorney general, has recently made news for filing a specious lawsuit against swing states in an effort to overturn the results of the presidential election. He lost the lawsuit but, the Atlantic argues, won in an effort to bolster his political career and distract from his own legal troubles, including securities fraud and felony counts he faces for allegedly trying to get investors to buy stock in a company without telling them he got a commission for it.

Antitrust cases are notoriously difficult to win, but the sheer number of them arising this year against Big Tech suggests the government at least thinks there’s a chance.

The move comes as false rumors about Covid-19 vaccines are surging online. 

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On Wednesday, Twitter announced that it will begin to take down Covid-19 vaccine misinformation starting next week. The company plans to remove false vaccine content that it considers “the most harmful,” and later on it will start labeling other posts that could be misleading.

“In the context of a global pandemic, vaccine misinformation presents a significant and growing public health challenge — and we all have a role to play,” the company said in a blog post. “We are focused on mitigating misleading information that presents the biggest potential harm to people’s health and wellbeing.”

Twitter’s announcement follows similar pledges from both Facebook and YouTube, which recently said they’ll remove false information related to Covid-19 vaccines. The announcement also comes after the US Food and Drug Administration’s authorization of the vaccine developed by Pfizer and BioNTech.

As the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine begins to be administered to health care workers and people in long-term care homes, misinformation related to vaccines has flourished online. For instance, unproven narratives that the Covid-19 vaccine has links to the Chinese Communist Party, or that the vaccine has a proven connection to a condition called Bell’s palsy, have gained tens of thousands of mentions in the past week, according to data collected by Zignal Labs.

This surge of misinformation has exacerbated concerns that part of the US population may be unwilling to get the vaccine, or will delay doing so. Recent polling suggests that while most Americans say they’ll probably or definitely get vaccinated against Covid-19, many may not do so immediately.

In a blog post, Twitter explained that it will take a two-pronged approach to vaccine content: taking down misinformation that poses the most harm while labeling content that’s misleading or out of context. Posts that could be removed, the company says, include anything that suggests that a Covid-19 vaccine is part of a “deliberate conspiracy” or that falsely claims Covid-19 is a hoax and so vaccines aren’t necessary. The company also said it would tackle misinformation related to vaccines more generally, including claims that have been “widely debunked about the adverse impacts or effects of receiving vaccinations.”

A Twitter spokesperson told Recode that when someone posts this type of misinformation, the platform will hide that content from public view. The person who posted it can then appeal the decision to Twitter or log on and remove that content themselves before they’ll be allowed to post again from their account.

Beginning next year, Twitter will also start adding labels to posts that the platform decides need further context, like rumors, contested claims, or claims about the Covid-19 vaccine that are “incomplete.”

Back in October, YouTube announced that it planned to remove Covid-19 vaccine misinformation, and it banned vaccine claims that went against what health experts and the World Health Organization said.

Earlier this month, Facebook said that under its policy requiring the removal of content that could lead to “imminent physical harm,” it too would remove false information related to Covid-19 vaccines. For instance, the company said it would take down content that said vaccines include microchips — a common and false conspiracy theory related to the Covid-19 vaccine. It’s also removing posts that claim that “specific populations are being used without their consent to test the vaccine’s safety.”

Just a month ago, Twitter had told Recode that while it recognized the importance of its platform to public health, it was still working out how it would approach moderating content surrounding a Covid-19 vaccine. Twitter would not comment on whether it worked with the other social media companies in developing the policies announced today.

Throughout the pandemic, Twitter has used a sliding scale between posts that deserve a label and posts that require removal, depending on how harmful that content could be. The company has also frequently used labels on posts sharing election misinformation.

Twitter’s new rules on vaccine misinformation suggest the fight against this problem is likely to continue. In fact, many of the same accounts that have pushed other types of false claims, like election misinformation, are now turning their attention toward the Covid-19 vaccine, indicating a significant challenge ahead for social media platforms.

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Chris Krebs stole the show.

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) and a group of other Senate Republicans finally acknowledged Joe Biden’s victory this week — and then Johnson’s Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee held a Wednesday hearing aimed at undermining it.

Biden’s decisive Electoral College victory on Monday forced Johnson and some of his Republican colleagues to belatedly recognize the reality of President Donald Trump’s defeat, after weeks of suggesting Trump might still somehow be declared the winner of November’s election. Now unable to deny Biden will be the next president, the hearing basically served as a platform for Republicans to lie about Biden’s win being tainted.

“The election in many ways was stolen,” claimed Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) at one point, in the bluntest example of how Republicans tried turning reality on its head.

But Paul didn’t even try to offer evidence to back his assertion up. And state officials spanning the political spectrum have one and all reported no irregularities that affected the result — many swing states held multiple recounts to ensure that this was the case.

"The election in many ways was stolen," Rand Paul lies, citing no evidence pic.twitter.com/G4m7mU7qRV

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) December 16, 2020

The witness list illustrated how Johnson tried to stack the deck. Among them were two attorneys for the Trump campaign, a Republican state legislator from Pennsylvania, and Ken Starr, the former Bill Clinton investigator who is perhaps best known these days as a Trump-friendly talking head on Fox News.

All of those witnesses either had obvious bias or little to no firsthand information about the security of the 2020 election. But the exception to that was Chris Krebs, the former head of the Homeland Security Department’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) who Trump fired by tweet last month after he refuted Trump’s lies and conspiracy theories by calling the election “the most secure in American history.”

Krebs, a Republican, repeatedly knocked down suggestions from Johnson and others that the election results were somehow manipulated by pointing out that the counts in all the states the Trump campaign contested are backed up by paper ballots.

Ron Johnson looks like he has indigestion as Krebs denounces Republican election fraud lies that have resulted in him and other officials receiving threats pic.twitter.com/hVjVwp1rVN

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) December 16, 2020

“It’s important to step back and actually look at how votes are cast in the country, particularly with paper ballots, and that regardless of any internet connections, regardless of foreign hacking, as long as you’ve got the paper receipt ... you can check your math.”

“Georgia did that three times and the outcomes were consistent,” Krebs added, alluding to the repeated recounts in Georgia that all showed Biden defeating Trump.

Krebs: "That's why it's so important to have a paper trail & paper ballots. So even if there was foreign interference of a malicious algorithm nature, you can go back to the receipts. You can check your math, and Georgia did that 3 times & the outcomes were consistent." pic.twitter.com/1Rq4FYnCsO

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) December 16, 2020

Krebs tried to patiently explain the safeguards that were in place to prevent election fraud, but at other points he didn’t try to hide the fact that he thinks Republicans needs to move on.

“I think we’re past the point where we need to be having conversations about the outcome of this election,” Krebs said, adding later: “We have to stop this. It’s undermining confidence in democracy.”

Much of Johnson’s hearing could’ve been mistaken for a Fox News segment

The ranking member of the Homeland Security Committee, Sen. Gary Peters (D-MI), began the hearing by castigating Republicans for wasting time with a hearing aimed at delegitimizing President-elect Biden in particular and US elections in general.

“Whether intended or not, this hearing gives a platform to conspiracy theories and lies and is a destructive exercise that has no place in the US Senate. Joe Biden won the election,” Peters said during his opening statement.

“There were no widespread election irregularities that affected the final outcome. These claims are false. And giving them more oxygen is a grave threat to the future of our democracy,” he added.

Peters: "There were no widespread election irregularities that affected the final outcome. These claims are false. And giving them more oxygen is a grave threat to the future of our democracy... we have seen democracies around the world crumble b/c of similar words and actions." pic.twitter.com/ioGyB1Qxkr

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) December 16, 2020

But those comments didn’t sit well with Johnson, who called them “galling” and sparked a heated exchange with Peters by calling him a liar.

“This is not about airing your grievances,” Peters fired back, prompting Johnson to repeatedly bang his gavel in an effort to silence him.

A very heated moment between Ron Johnson and Gary Peters pic.twitter.com/e1zuGb9Kbr

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) December 16, 2020

In fact, Johnson’s hearing did appear to be mostly about airing grievances. For instance, Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) made a case that Republicans raising conspiratorial questions about the election results is no different from Democrats’ “Russia hoax.” An important difference, however, is that while there’s lots of evidence the Trump campaign colluded with Russia, there’s no evidence of significant election irregularities.

Hawley also shared that “yesterday I was talking with some of the constituents back at home — a group of about 30 people — every single one of them, every one of them, told me that they felt they had been disenfranchised, that their votes didn’t matter, that the election had been rigged. These are normal, reasonable people, these are not crazy people.”

Josh Hawley's "these are not crazy people" shirt raises a lot of questions answered by his shirt pic.twitter.com/tikoLawsyG

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) December 16, 2020

But the fact that Trump voters believe the conspiracy theories Republicans have been pushing about election fraud is not evidence that they’re true. And when Republicans have been challenged in courtrooms and elsewhere to produce evidence that rises beyond insinuation and anecdote, they’ve come up with nothing.

If there was any doubt that Hawley’s comments about election fraud were coming from a place of bad faith, it was resolved by the fact that he directed each of the string of loaded questions he asked to cable news talking head Ken Starr — and not a single one to Krebs, the witness with by far the most firsthand information about the election.

By pandering to Trump, Republicans are putting themselves in bind

Even as more Republicans succumb to the reality of Biden’s win, Wednesday’s hearing illustrated how many of them continue to try to curry favor with Trump, whose lies about the election continue to get more outlandish.

On Tuesday night, for instance, Trump tweeted a debunked conspiracy theory about voting machines switching votes from Trump to Biden — a claim not backed up by any of the recounts that have taken place, including recounts of the paper ballots Krebs mentioned.

“Study: Dominion Machines shifted 2-3% of Trump Votes to Biden. Far more votes than needed to sway election.” Florida, Ohio, Texas and many other states were won by even greater margins than projected. Did just as well with Swing States, but bad things happened. @OANN

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 16, 2020

As if on cue, Trump wasted no time after the hearing ended highlighting how effortlessly he lies about anything and everything. He tweeted that Krebs “was totally excoriated and proven wrong at the Senate Hearing,” even though anyone who watched it knows that nothing of the sort happened.

Chris Krebs was totally excoriated and proven wrong at the Senate Hearing on the Fraudulent 2020 Election. Massive FRAUD took place with machines, people voting from out of state, illegals, dead people, no signatures—and so much more!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 16, 2020

The defeated president has obvious self-interested reasons for falsely insisting that he only lost because of cheating, but Republican senators are playing a dangerous game. Not only are they delegitimizing US elections, but they’re running the risk of demoralizing Republicans votes who are being told voting doesn’t matter because election results are predetermined.

Just weeks ahead of Georgia runoffs in which control of the US Senate is at stake, the conspiracy theories Republicans like Johnson, Paul, and Hawley are pushing could do serious damage to their cause. But whether they’re thinking beyond crafting the perfect 30-second soundbite for Sean Hannity’s Fox News show is unclear.

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