 So I wanted to direct all of your attention to antitrustsummer.com So I know a lot of my viewers care about net neutrality and you know internet issues with regard to privacy and internet freedom So this right here is something that I want to draw your attention to because we actually have an opportunity To accomplish some really good things so breaking the Senate is expected to vote on antitrust bills S2992 and S2710 in a matter of weeks antitrust summer is on now We'll go to each of these bills and then I'll explain why they're important But first big tech giants are violating our rights and undermining our democracy And because they abuse their monopoly power to stifle competition many of us don't have other choices Fortunately, US Congress has finally introduced legislation to put people back in control of tech Tell your elected officials to pass antitrust reform legislation and stop big tech from dominating our lives So what this gets to the heart of is all of these monopolies Most of you I would imagine you only have access to one internet service provider You know if you go online and you want to shop I mean who do you go to first usually Amazon Maybe Walmart comm I mean the internet has become monopolized You know there's monopolies everywhere in every single sector So these bills are important because they are going to fight that and they're actually good bills So this website antitrust summer dot com links you to both of these bills But here's what the open app markets act does this is HR 7030 or S2710 in the Senate Would protect developers rights to tell consumers about lower prices and offer competitive pricing Protect side loading of apps open up competitive avenues for startup apps Third-party app stores and payment services make it possible for developers to offer new experiences That take advantage of consumer device features give consumers more control over their devices Prevent app stores from disadvantaged developers and set safeguards to continue to protect privacy Security and safety of consumers So all of you can probably understand the implications of this just by reading that But think about the ways that all of these app stores who dominate are able to control smaller apps Control developers you know if you want to put an app into people's phones you've got to go through Google You've got to go through the iOS app store they can charge prices they can filter out content that they don't like Or app developers or apps that they don't like So what this would just do is even the playing field right that's really important Now for the American innovation and choice online act HR 3816 in the house Bill S 2992 in the Senate would prevent dominant platforms from abusing their gatekeeper power By favoring their own products or services Disadvantaging rivals or discriminating among business businesses that use their platforms in a manner That would materially harm competition on the platform So just off the bat I know that you all can think of examples of this So if you go to Amazon for example and you search for an HDMI cable Well there's nothing really stopping Amazon currently from recommending their own brand Amazon basics right But there's hundreds of other companies that sell HDMI cables So why should these companies who have monopolies online Why should these companies who are dominant be allowed to take their items and push it to the top Same with Google you know if they want to direct you to one of their products that they sell Well if you Google something if you Google phones what's to stop them from placing you know their own products at the very top So this is incredibly important so this is about fairness and these bills are really surprisingly good So for example by preventing another business's product or service from interoperating with the dominant platform Or another business by requiring a business to buy a dominant platforms goods or services Or for preferred placement on its platform by misusing a business's data to compete against them Or by biasing search results in favor of the dominant firm Now if this is really confusing don't worry so believe it or not Mainstream media cover this and I'm talking about John Stuart I can't play this clip for you but John Stuart released a 26 minute segment nearly 27 minute segment Going over all of this in really really great detail And I would highly encourage you to watch that this video is linked on antitrustsummer.com But since I can't play it for you I just want to read this article from Gizmodo This was written by Mac D. Giran that kind of goes over what John Oliver is saying here Comedian John Oliver decided to wade into the antitrust battleground this week and he didn't hold back any punches Oliver devoted 25 minutes of his most recent last week tonight show to discuss general big tech badness And advocated in favor of a pair of historic antitrust bills currently being considered in Congress The Comedian zeroes in on claims made by advocacy groups and small businesses And small business that giants like Google and Meta engage in anti competitive self-preferencing behavior That essentially cements their status as unrivaled dominators And that's what really is important, right? Because once you make it, once you're big, you can use the power that you've accumulated to keep others from being as successful as you are And so this is similar but not identical to the net neutrality fight So if you'll recall net neutrality was about keeping the internet free and open So if Comcast wanted to make more money by selling you internet packages Rather than just charging you 100 bucks a month for all of the internet Well they could in theory without net neutrality charge you 29.99 for the social media package Another 15.99 if you want to add on the entertainment package with Netflix, Hulu You know without net neutrality there's nothing stopping them from carving up the internet in order to increase profits And you know if you have a monopoly if there's no other internet service provider that you can go to Well they can do that because you have no fucking choice, right? So that's why their power has to be reigned in and efforts like this They help with that effort During the segment Oliver took aim at Apple's roughly 30% App Store commission fee Referred to as the Apple tax by critics which he jokingly described as blood money Oliver then took a stab at Google which he criticized for exploiting its market dominance in search Researches estimate that Google possesses over 90% of the search market share Oliver cited research claiming two thirds of all those Google searches never actually result in a user leaving a related Google property Imagine searching Google for a food recipe only to be directed to an alphabet-owned YouTube video That Oliver argues is self-preferencing in actions Google's algorithm shouldn't determine whether or not someone's business is real Oliver said referring to businesses like Yelp who's accused Google of stealing their content and argued The tech giant self-preferencing has limited their visibility and reach So we're not going to go further I'm going to recommend that you watch the segment But the article is there if you want to read it These are really really important bills so I would highly encourage you to go to antitrustsummer.com Sign up, contact your representative, your senator and let them know that they need to support these pieces of legislation Because it would actually be a game changer in terms of increasing fairness on the internet