NY leads massive antitrust suit from 48 attorneys general against 'predatory' Facebook to force it to sell Instagram and WhatsApp because it uses its dominance to 'suffocate and squash rivals'

Forty-six states and the Federal Trade Commission have filed massive antitrust lawsuits against Facebook, seeking to force the company to divest major acquisitions such as Instagram and WhatsApp.

One suit filed on Wednesday in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia is spearheaded by New York Attorney General Letitia James, leading a coalition of 46 states as well as Washington DC and Guam.

The lawsuit alleges that, over the last decade, Facebook illegally acquired potential competitors in a 'predatory' manner in order to dominate the market, and asks the court to consider splitting up the company by unwinding those deals.

Separately, the Federal Trade Commission filed a 53-page complaint against Facebook on Wednesday, also seeking to break up the company.

'Facebook's actions to entrench and maintain its monopoly deny consumers the benefits of competition,' said Ian Conner, Director of the FTC's Bureau of Competition in a statement.

'Our aim is to roll back Facebook's anticompetitive conduct and restore competition so that innovation and free competition can thrive,' he added.

In separate moves, the Justice Department also sued Google in October, accusing the internet giant of abusing its dominance in online search and advertising.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9036231/New-York-attorney-general-launches-massive-antitrust-suit-against-Facebook.html

'Chilling and Authoritarian': YouTube Announces How It Plans to Handle Videos Critical of 2020 Election

YouTube announced plans on Wednesday to censor content that challenges 2020’s election results, saying the company will continue to strive to connect people “with authoritative information.”

“Yesterday was the safe harbor deadline for the U.S. Presidential election and enough states have certified their election results to determine a President-elect,” the tech giant said in a blog post. “Given that, we will start removing any piece of content uploaded today (or anytime after) that misleads people by alleging that widespread fraud or errors changed the outcome of the 2020 U.S. Presidential election, in line with our approach towards historical U.S. Presidential elections.

For example, we will remove videos claiming that a Presidential candidate won the election due to widespread software glitches or counting errors. We will begin enforcing this policy today, and will ramp up in the weeks to come. As always, news coverage and commentary on these issues can remain on our site if there’s sufficient education, documentary, scientific or artistic context.”

The company further explained that in addition to “limiting the reach of borderline content” they also “prominently [surfaced] authoritative information.”

While only a small portion of watch time is election-related content, YouTube continues to be an important source of election news. On average 88% of the videos in top 10 search results related to elections came from authoritative news sources (amongst the rest are things like newsy late-night shows, creator videos and commentary). And the most viewed channels and videos are from news channels like NBC and CBS.

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/leahbarkoukis/2020/12/09/youtube-to-remove-videos-critical-of-2020-election-n2581279

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