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Facebook and Amazon are now the biggest bribers of Congressmen


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2021 Mar 27, 1:01pm   1,086 views  41 comments

by Patrick   ➕follow (55)   💰tip   ignore  

https://reclaimthenet.org/facebook-and-amazon-are-now-washingtons-biggest-lobbyists/

Amazon and Facebook have been the largest spender in corporate lobbying in Washington over the past two years, surpassing telecom providers and defense contractors. The large spending by Big Tech companies is a response to the increased scrutiny over their moderation policies and violations of antitrust.

According to a new report by Public Citizen, based on data by Center for Responsive Politics, Amazon increased lobbying spending by 30% to reach $18.7 million while Facebook increased by 56% to reach $18.7 million, between 2018 and 2020. The two tech companies were closely followed by telecom provider Comcast and defense contractor Lockheed Martin, which spent $14.4 million and $13 million respectively.

Facebook and Amazon were not among the top eighth largest corporate lobbying spenders in 2017. But over the last two years, they have opened their substantial wallets to lobbying teams in an attempt to influence policy in their favor.

“The foundation of the Big Tech companies’ influence are their lobbying teams, which use campaign contributions, existing relationships, and past experience to swing policy in their favor,” read the report by Public Citizen. “While not even in the top eight spenders in 2017, Facebook and Amazon are now the two largest individual lobbying spenders.”

The large spending by the two Big Tech companies has coincided with increased scrutiny over antitrust practices, privacy concerns, and content censorship policies.

Facebook, as well as Google, was the subject of an antitrust lawsuit brought by the Trump administration. All four Big Tech companies, Amazon, Apple, Google, and Facebook were implicated in a sweeping proposal for antitrust laws brought by House Democrats, that suggested the breaking up of the companies.

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18   EBGuy   2021 Apr 9, 6:01pm  

Looks like Amazon defeated the unionization drive in Alabama:
William and Lavonette Stokes, who started work at the Bessemer warehouse in July, said the union had failed to convince them how it could improve their working conditions. Amazon already provides good benefits, relatively high pay that starts at $15 an hour and opportunities to advance, said the couple, who have five children.
“Amazon is the only job I know where they pay your health insurance from Day 1,” Ms. Stokes, 52, said. She added that she had been turned off by how organizers tried to cast the union drive as an extension of the Black Lives Matter movement because most of the workers are Black.
“This was not an African-American issue,’’ said Ms. Stokes, who is Black. “I feel you can work there comfortably without being harassed.”
19   just_passing_through   2021 Apr 25, 12:22pm  

So far this year I've managed to make zero purchases on Amazon. I do use them to find products but then go seek out another source and have saved money doing so. Not enough to justify the extra 5-15mins of searching but still. No Walmart either but Target once.

Also, no Chinese products. This week I received a salt and pepper mill set that cost me $100. It's quality though, Peugeot Saveurs, the oldest mill company in the world I think?

I bought a cheapy from Amazon last May made in China and it already broke due to plastic internals.

https://us.peugeot-saveurs.com/en_us/isen-natural-wood-salt-mill-with-crank-handle-18-cm-7.html
https://us.peugeot-saveurs.com/en_us/isen-matte-black-wood-pepper-mill-with-crank-handle-18-cm-7.html

I figure those last me for 30 years until I'm too arthritic and weak to turn the cranks and require an electric. Or maybe my robot assistant will just do it for me.
20   just_passing_through   2021 Apr 25, 7:17pm  

I say this only to walk out my door an hour later to find a shipment from Amazon. Despite ordering my light soy sauce from the company who makes it they used Amazon to ship it to me.
21   AmericanKulak   2021 Apr 25, 9:29pm  

I'll never forget how my wife tossed the $150 Beaver Hair Shave Brush I got at a place in Manhattan when we first moved in together.

"Dontcha have to throw these things out after a few uses"

SIGH.

(Sorry for off topic, thinking about buying nice shit).
22   just_passing_through   2021 Apr 25, 9:30pm  

hahaHAHAhahaha
23   HeadSet   2021 Apr 26, 4:38pm  

MisdemeanorRebellionNoCoupForYou says
$150 Beaver Hair Shave Brush

I used high quality boar bristle brushers that soft and applied lather well. Nothing beats such a hot shave. But I stopped when I could no longer find decent shaving soap.
24   Patrick   2021 May 3, 10:26am  

https://www.politico.eu/article/amazon-seller-data-company-sales/

Since then, reports of employees using third-party seller information to bolster Amazon's own sales and evidence of lax IT access controls at the company suggest that efforts to fix the issue have been lackluster.

The revelations come as trustbusters worldwide are increasingly targeting Amazon, including over how it uses third-party seller data to boost its own offerings. The European Commission opened an investigation into precisely this issue in November 2020, with preliminary findings suggesting Amazon had breached EU competition law.

“This is fuel for the suspicions I had,” Dutch internet entrepreneur Peter Sorber said when told about the audit. Sorber sold children's clothes on Amazon, but 18 months after setting up his "Brandkids" store on the platform and entering the required sales data, his products disappeared from the search rankings.

“You cannot ask a retailer to show his entire story with all sales statistics and then show that to your own purchasers. This is worse than not done. This is simply unfair competition,” Sorber said.


So if you sell on Amazon, they use your data to decide how best to kill you with Amazon's own products.

It's similar to what Microsoft did with 3rd party apps: if an app got popular, Microsoft would create its own clone and use the secret parts of the Windows API itself to give the Microsoft clone a performance advantage.
25   Patrick   2021 Jun 7, 2:46pm  

https://spectator.us/topic/amazon-exempt-biden-global-tax/

But here’s the rub. Not all multinational corporations have a profit margin of over 10 percent. Amazon, for example, had a profit margin of 6.3 percent of its $386 billion global profits in 2020. In other words, it is not going to be caught by this tax at all. Many other companies who do currently have profit margins above 10 percent will presumably already be thinking up ways of engineering margins below this threshold.
26   Misc   2021 Jun 8, 9:36am  

Patrick says
https://spectator.us/topic/amazon-exempt-biden-global-tax/

But here’s the rub. Not all multinational corporations have a profit margin of over 10 percent. Amazon, for example, had a profit margin of 6.3 percent of its $386 billion global profits in 2020. In other words, it is not going to be caught by this tax at all. Many other companies who do currently have profit margins above 10 percent will presumably already be thinking up ways of engineering margins below this threshold.


They will simply increase the compensation of their executives to avoid the extra taxes. ---- Win Win
27   Patrick   2021 Jun 10, 5:36pm  

https://reclaimthenet.org/lawmakers-demand-answers-on-facebook-censorship-at-behest-of-biden-administration/


Following the revelation that Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg was in email communication with the country’s top epidemiologist Dr. Anthony Fauci, House Republicans sent a letter demanding answers on why the company censored lab leak theories.

According to the Republican legislators, the emails suggest that Fauci advised Facebook to censor the lab leak theories.


Government officials getting private corporations to censor the public is effectively the same as government censoring the public.
28   HeadSet   2021 Jun 10, 7:12pm  

Misc says
They will simply increase the compensation of their executives to avoid the extra taxes. ---- Win Win

Ironic. Originally the "progressives" were talking about triggering a tax on a corporation when that corporation pays its CEO more than X times the average worker pay in that corporation.
31   Patrick   2021 Jun 28, 5:22pm  

https://www.theepochtimes.com/mkt_breakingnews/court-dismisses-federal-governments-antitrust-case-against-facebook_3878130.html?utm_source=patrick.net&utm_medium=patrick.net&utm_campaign=patrick.net

Court Dismisses Federal Government’s Antitrust Case Against Facebook
BY JACK PHILLIPS June 28, 2021

A federal court has dismissed two antitrust cases that were brought against Facebook, representing a significant setback for federal and state regulators in their attempts to rein in Big Tech.

The lawsuits were filed by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and state attorneys general seeking to break up what they’ve described as Facebook’s monopoly on social networking.


How convenient for Facebook. I wonder if all the data they collect on Americans might have something to do with the dismissals...
34   Patrick   2021 Jul 30, 11:52pm  

https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-employees-number-1-of-153-us-workers-head-count-2021-7

1 out of every 153 American workers is an Amazon employee

Amazon employs 950,000 workers in the US, the company said in its latest earnings report.
The US has a population of 261 million and an employed non-farm workforce of 145 million, per the BLS.
More people work for Amazon than are employed in the entire residential construction industry.
35   HeadSet   2021 Jul 31, 8:19am  

Patrick says
https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-employees-number-1-of-153-us-workers-head-count-2021-7

1 out of every 153 American workers is an Amazon employee

Amazon employs 950,000 workers in the US, the company said in its latest earnings report.
The US has a population of 261 million and an employed non-farm workforce of 145 million, per the BLS.
More people work for Amazon than are employed in the entire residential construction industry.

And WalMart is the number one non-government employer.
36   Patrick   2021 Jul 31, 11:22am  

Bezos and the Walton families are the greatest risks to Americans' finances, freedom, and safety.
39   Patrick   2021 Aug 22, 5:52pm  

https://reclaimthenet.org/facebook-suspends-canadian-political-candidate-marc-emery-during-campaign-season/


Facebook suspends Canadian political candidate Marc Emery during campaign season
For criticizing what he says is the "the evil Covid dictatorship."
40   Patrick   2022 Apr 8, 9:02pm  

https://theintercept.com/2022/04/04/amazon-union-living-wage-restrooms-chat-app/?source=patrick.net


AMAZON WILL BLOCK and flag employee posts on a planned internal messaging app that contain keywords pertaining to labor unions, according to internal company documents reviewed by The Intercept. An automatic word monitor would also block a variety of terms that could represent potential critiques of Amazon’s working conditions, like “slave labor,” “prison,” and “plantation,” as well as “restrooms” — presumably related to reports of Amazon employees relieving themselves in bottles to meet punishing quotas.

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