It's damned hard to prove an antitrust case: so often, the prosecution has to prove that the company intended to crush competition, and/or that they raised prices or reduced quality because they knew they didn't have to fear competitors.
It's a lot easier to prove what a corporation did than it is to prove why they did it. What am I, a mind-reader? But imagine for a second that the corporation in the dock is a global multinational. Now, imagine that the majority of the voting shares in that company are held by one man, who has served as the company's CEO since the day he founded it, personally calling every important shot in the company's history.
Now imagine that this founder/CEO, this accused monopolist, was an incorrigible blabbermouth, who communicated with his underlings almost exclusively in writing, and thus did he commit to immortal digital storage a stream â a torrent â of memos in which he explicitly confessed his guilt.
Ladies and gentlepersons, I give you Mark Zuckerberg, founder and CEO of Meta (nee Facebook), an accused monopolist who cannot keep his big dumb fucking mouth shut. (...)
Facebook paid GOP firm to malign TikTok The firm, Targeted Victory, pushed local operatives across the country to boost messages calling TikTok a threat to American children. âDream would be to get stories with headlines like âFrom dances to danger,â â one campaign director said.
Few tech companies have as much to gain as Facebook from TikTokâs travails, and the social-media giant has taken an active role in raising concerns about the popular app and its Chinese owners.
In addition to Zuckerbergâs personal outreach and public statements about Chinese competition, Facebook has established an advocacy group, called American Edge, that has begun running ads extolling U.S. tech companies for their contributions to American economic might, national security and cultural influence. And Facebook overall in the first half of this year spent more on lobbying than any single company, according to data from the Center for Responsive Politics. In 2018, by contrast, it ranked eighth among companies, the centerâs data show.
A statement from Cambridge Analytica's board of directors said Mr Nix had been suspended with "immediate effect, pending a full, independent investigation".
It added: "In the view of the board, Mr Nix's recent comments secretly recorded by Channel 4 and other allegations do not represent the values or operations of the firm and his suspension reflects the seriousness with which we view this violation."
The firm's chief data officer, Dr Alexander Tayler - who was also filmed discussing campaign strategy for Mr Trump - will serve as acting CEO.
