Originally published at: FTC Launches Task Force to Examine Big Tech | Infostormer.com
The Federal Trade Commission is launching a task force to examine the big Silicon Valley tech monopolies.
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) responded to its critics this week by launching a new task force to examine big tech’s market power as the agency faces pressure to get tougher on the nation’s corporate giants.
The FTC said Tuesday that the new team would be policing for anticompetitive behavior in the tech sector as well as reviewing proposed mergers and ones that have already been approved by the agency.
But the announcement has sparked a host of questions and new criticism for the agency from both tech industry defenders and critics.
The commitment to look at “consummated” mergers suggests the task force could be looking to breakup large tech companies. But those who have called on the agency to do that are waiting for more concrete signs the FTC is serious about cracking down on Silicon Valley.
What is there to examine though? There’s an endless amount of information already in the public domain to justify regulating the shit out of them. Anti-trust laws should absolutely be used to break them up.
Unfortunately, this just looks like a dog and pony show by the FTC to pretend like they’re doing something against the tech industry. I am not optimistic that this will amount to anything.
And there’s no mention of this task force looking at speech censorship by these companies. That’s by far the most critical and important issue of all and it doesn’t appear as if that will be their focus.