Categories
Politics

F.T.C. Refiles Fb Antitrust Go well with

WASHINGTON – The Federal Trade Commission re-targeted Facebook Thursday, increasing its allegations that the company was a monopoly illegally suppressing competition in an attempt to overcome the skepticism of a federal judge who dismissed the agency’s original case two months ago .

The lawsuit filed on Thursday contains the same overall arguments as the original, namely that Facebook’s Instagram and WhatsApp acquisitions were made to create a “ditch” for its monopoly on social networks, and argues that the social network should be disbanded. But the updated lawsuit is nearly twice as long and has more facts and analysis that the agency says it better supports the government’s allegations.

“Facebook lacked the business acumen and technical talent to make the transition to cell phones,” Holly Vedova, the acting director of the agency’s competition bureau, said in a statement. “After failing to compete with new innovators, Facebook illegally bought them or buried them when their popularity became an existential threat.”

Facebook replied, “There was no valid claim that Facebook was a monopoly – and that has not changed. Our Instagram and WhatsApp acquisitions were reviewed and approved many years ago, and our platform policies were lawful. “

The agency had to re-file the case after the judge in charge said in June that the government had not provided enough evidence that Facebook was a monopoly on social networks. The judge’s decision, and a similar one he made in one of more than 40 states brought against the company, dealt a staggering blow to regulatory efforts to contain big tech.

His decision represented the first major test for Lina Khan, the FTC chairwoman, who had only been in office for a few days at the time. Ms. Khan represents a wave of new thinking in the industry among administrators and many lawmakers, arguing that the government needs to take far more aggressive measures to curb the power of tech giants like Facebook, Google, Amazon and Apple. President Biden has appointed several regulators with similar goals, and lawmakers have proposed updates to antitrust laws to combat the power of tech companies.

Criticism of the first version of the Facebook case by Judge James E. Boasberg of the District Court of the District of Columbia highlighted the major challenges that regulators are facing. Although companies dominate the markets in which they operate – social media, in the case of Facebook – the courts often examine whether prices are rising as a sign of monopoly. The most popular services from Facebook are free.

“Nobody who hears the title of the film ‘The Social Network’ from 2010 wonders which company it is about,” wrote Richter Boasberg. “But whatever it means to the public, ‘monopoly power’ is a federal art term with a precise economic meaning.” He directed the FTC to back up claims that Facebook controlled 60 percent of the market for “personal social networks” and that Competition blocked.

Ms. Khan then faced a choice of how to deal with Judge Boasberg’s decision. One way was to drop the case entirely, while another was to expand it with even broader allegations. Instead, she went more of a middle ground and filed the lawsuit with more detail and a fuller account of the company, and what the agency says is a pattern of anti-competitive behavior since Mark Zuckerberg co-founded it at Harvard in 2004.

The revised lawsuit was approved 3: 2 by the commission, with the commission’s three Democrats voting in favor and the two Republican members opposing.

In the new complaint, the FTC provides more details to support government claims that Facebook has a monopoly on social networks. But in the public version of the lawsuit, many of the statistics have been blacked out because the numbers are proprietary.

The agency said that Facebook – the company’s largest service, known within the company as Facebook Blue – and Instagram are the leading social networks in the US, well ahead of its closest competitor, Snapchat.

The agency refuted Facebook’s claims that it had many competitors in social networking, instant messaging, and entertainment. The agency argued that Facebook’s products are intended for “personal social networks”, which distinguishes them from specialized social networks such as the professional network LinkedIn or the neighborhood site NextDoor. The FTC added that Facebook’s products are also different from messaging services like Signal and iMessage in that users don’t typically use these services to send notes to large groups, nor do they use these services to find contacts.

And the agency said that Facebook was different from Twitter, YouTube, and TikTok in that content on those sites was usually created for the public, rather than targeted at specific people on a social network.

“Today and since 2011, Facebook has a dominant share of the relevant market for US personal social networking services, measured using several metrics: time spent, daily active users and monthly active users,” the agency said in its complaint.

The core argument of the FTC is that Facebook tried to maintain a monopoly over social networks through the acquisitions of Instagram in 2012 and WhatsApp in 2014. Facebook in the new mobile environment, “the agency said in its complaint.

The lawsuit also states that as of 2010, the company stifled competitors like Circle, a social network, and Vine, a short video platform, by pushing new boundaries for external developers whose products are connected to Facebook to work with other social ones Networks added.

“Facebook does not beat competitors by improving its own product, but by imposing anti-competitive restrictions on developers,” the lawsuit said.

Facebook has criticized the arguments as a revisionist story, pointing out that the FTC reviewed the mergers with Instagram and WhatsApp and did not block deals.

“The FTC’s allegations are an attempt to rewrite the antitrust laws and reverse the set expectations for the merger review by telling the business community that no sale is ever final,” Facebook said Thursday.

The company has filed a motion to Ms. Khan to withdraw from the agency’s case, saying her work on a House investigation into platform monopolies shows a bias against the company. The FTC said Thursday it had dismissed that petition, saying that Facebook would receive “adequate constitutional protection from due process” as the case would be heard by a federal judge.

Bill Kovacic, a former FTC chairman, said the agency had done enough to “fight another day”.

“The judge said ‘show your work’ and it appears you have done enough to accommodate that request,” he said.

But he warned that the case would face a long and steep challenge. The FTC has won fewer than 20 of its monopoly cases in the appeals court since it was founded more than 100 years ago, he said.

“Facebook will fight this bitterly,” added Kovacic.

Categories
Entertainment

MoviePass Deceived Customers So They’d Use It Much less, F.T.C. Says

When a senior executive warned that the practice would attract the attention of federal regulators and attorneys-general, Mr. Lowe replied in writing, “OK, I see,” suggesting that the company do it with “2 percent of our highest volume users “The FTC. try said.

Let us help you protect your digital life

In a separate effort, the company required around 450,000 people of the 20 percent of subscribers who used the service most frequently to submit photos of their physical movie tickets for approval through the app and inform them that they were “randomly” selected for the program, said the FTC. Those who failed to properly submit the tickets more than once would void their accounts, the FTC said.

The automated verification system often did not work on popular mobile operating systems, and the software failed to recognize many user-submitted photos, the FTC said. The FTC said the program prevented thousands of people from using the service.

Mr Lowe personally selected how many people were needed to submit photos, the FTC said.

In a third attempt described by the Commission, the company created a “tripwire” by limiting the frequency of use of the service by certain users but not disclosing this in its advertising or terms of use. The company grouped subscribers according to the frequency of use of the service. Once the group hit an unannounced limit, the people in the group would no longer be able to use the service, regulators said. Often times, users didn’t know they were being cut off until they got to the theater and expected to use their subscriptions, they said.

The tripwire was usually placed on users who attended more than three films a month, the FTC said. Mr. Lowe set the thresholds, it said.

In addition, a previously reported data breach in 2019 disclosed the personal and financial information, including credit card numbers, of more than 28,000 customers, the FTC said.

After three million people signed up – a lot more than executives expected – the company was struggling to raise enough cash to offset the cost. In April 2018, the company announced to regulators that it has been losing about $ 20 million a month for several months. In July 2018, it raised $ 5 million after saying it couldn’t pay its bills and experienced a service interruption, but the company insisted that its service remain stable.

Categories
Business

Biden Nominates Critic of Huge Tech to F.T.C.: Reside Updates

Here’s what you need to know:

Credit…Pool photo by Susan Walsh

Jerome H. Powell, the head of the Federal Reserve, will tell lawmakers on Tuesday that the economy is healing, saying that while many workers and businesses continue to suffer, the aggressive response from the central bank, Congress and the White House helped to avoid the most devastating economic scenarios.

“While the economic fallout has been real and widespread, the worst was avoided by swift and vigorous action,” Mr. Powell will tell the House Financial Services committee, according to prepared remarks.

He will point out that the economy has recently improved, including the labor market, which has begun adding back jobs after a winter lull.

“However, the sectors of the economy most adversely affected by the resurgence of the virus, and by greater social distancing, remain weak, and the unemployment rate — still elevated at 6.2 percent — underestimates the shortfall,” Mr. Powell is set to say.

The Fed chair will add that the central bank, which currently has rates at near-zero and is buying bonds to keep credit flowing and to bolster the economy, “will not lose sight of the millions of Americans who are still hurting.”

Mr. Powell will say the Fed’s many market-facing programs in 2020, which supported credit to corporations, midsize businesses and municipalities, helped to “keep organizations from shuttering and put employers in both a better position to keep workers on and to hire them back as the recovery continues.”

And he will underline that the programs, in most cases, have either shut down or will soon end. Mr. Powell consistently has said that the lending efforts, supported by the Treasury, were emergency tools that the Fed would stop using once conditions were stable.

David Dobrik is one of YouTube’s most popular creators, with more than 18.7 million subscribers on his primary channel. Credit…Rodin Eckenroth/Getty Images

Some investors have started distancing themselves from Dispo, a fast-growing photo-sharing app, after its co-founder, the YouTube creator David Dobrik, became embroiled in controversy.

Dispo, which launched in 2019, is a photo-based social platform similar to Instagram that mimics the experience of using a disposable camera. Photos taken through the Dispo app take 24 hours to “develop” and appear on a user’s feed.

In October, Dispo raised $4 million in a funding round led by Seven Seven Six, the firm of Alexis Ohanian, the Reddit co-founder. In February, the company garnered an additional $20 million in a financing led by Spark Capital; the funding valued Dispo at $200 million.

But in an investigation by Insider that published last week, Mr. Dobrik was accused of playing a role in a sexual assault scandal involving a former member of his “Vlog Squad.” He later told The Information that he would leave Dispo and step down from its board. And some of Dispo’s investors have also started backing away.

On Sunday, Spark Capital said it would “sever all ties” with Dispo. “We have stepped down from our position on the board, and we are in the process of making arrangements to ensure we do not profit from our recent investment in Dispo,” the venture firm posted on Twitter.

On Monday, Mr. Ohanian and Seven Seven Six also issued a statement calling the accusations against Mr. Dobrik “extremely troubling” and “directly at odds with Seven Seven Six’s core values.” Mr. Ohanian posted to Instagram that he and Seven Seven Six supported Mr. Dobrik’s choice to step down from the company.

Seven Seven Six also said on Twitter that it would donate any profits from its investment “to an organization working with survivors of sexual assault.”

We have made the decision to donate any profits from our investment in Dispo to an organization working with survivors of sexual assault. We have believed in Dispo’s mission since the beginning and will continue to support the hardworking team bringing it to life.

— 7️⃣7️⃣6️⃣ (@sevensevensix) March 22, 2021

Unshackled Ventures, another early investor in Dispo, said on Monday that it would also donate any profits from its investment to organizations focused on survivors of sexual assault, including Maitri, which is focused on helping South Asian survivors of domestic violence.

“We are a female majority team that does not take this lightly. We are in full support of their decision to part ways with David,” Unshackled Ventures said in a statement.

The recent allegations against David Dobrik are disturbing and counter to Unshackled values. As a female majority team, we do not take this lightly. We are in support of the companies decision to part ways with David and will continue to monitor the situation closely.

— Unshackled Ventures (@UnshackledVC) March 22, 2021

Dispo and Mr. Dobrik did not respond to requests for comment.

Over the past year, many investors have become enamored with the influencer world. “I feel like something has palpably shifted in the past year among investors, and it seems like everyone is talking about the creator economy now and investing in creator tools,” Li Jin, founder of Atelier, a venture firm investing in the creator space told The New York Times in December.

But several popular YouTube stars have come under fire over the past year for scandals involving racism and sexual assault.

Mr. Dobrik is one of YouTube’s most popular creators, with more than 18.7 million subscribers on his primary channel. After gaining fame on Vine, the short-video app, he and a group of friends called the “Vlog Squad” began creating short, comedic content often involving stunts for sites such as YouTube, TikTok and Instagram.

Lina Khan during her fellowship at the F.T.C. in 2018. Credit…Lexey Swall for The New York Times

President Biden on Monday nominated Lina Khan to the Federal Trade Commission, installing a vocal critic of Big Tech into a key oversight role of the industry.

If her nomination is approved by the Senate, Ms. Khan, 32, would fill one of two empty seats earmarked for Democrats at the F.T.C.

Ms. Khan became recognized for her ideas on antitrust with a Yale Law Journal paper in 2017 called “Amazon’s Antitrust Paradox” that accused Amazon of abusing its monopoly power and put a critical focus on decades-old legal theories that relied heavily on price increases as the underlying measure of antitrust violations.

She served as a senior adviser to Rohit Chopra when he was F.T.C. commissioner. Most recently, she was a leading counsel member to a 16-month-long investigation of online platforms and competition by the House antitrust subcommittee. As a result, Democratic leaders on the subcommittee called for the breakup of Big Tech and legislation to strengthen enforcement of competition violations across the economy.

“As consumers, as users, we love these tech companies,” Ms. Khan said in an interview with The New York Times in 2018. “But as citizens, as workers, and as entrepreneurs, we recognize that their power is troubling. We need a new framework, a new vocabulary for how to assess and address their dominance.”

Ms. Khan is the second prominent advocate of breaking up the large tech companies placed by the Biden administration in top antitrust roles. Also this month, Mr. Biden picked Tim Wu, a prominent critic of Google, Facebook and Amazon, as special assistant to the president on competition policy.

Turkish lira banknotes at a currency exchange in Ankara. An unexpected change at the head of Turkey’s central bank caused a steep drop in the lira’s value.Credit…Murad Sezer/Reuters

Turkey’s currency tumbled on Monday after President Recep Tayyip Erdogan fired the head of the central bank, who had been in the job just four months and had pursued policies aimed at taming inflation. The Turkish lira plunged 7 percent against the U.S. dollar.

The removal of Turkey’s central bank chief, Naci Agbal, signals a return to the unorthodox policies that Mr. Erdogan has long favored, such as cutting interest rates to lower inflation, but which most economists regard as counterproductive. Mr. Erdogan has repeatedly meddled in the central bank’s activities and over the years traders have dumped the lira.

Since his appointment in November, Mr. Agbal has raised the central bank’s benchmark interest rate from 10.25 percent to 19 percent in an effort to slow the overheating economy, control inflation and lure in foreign investment. He had succeeded in pulling the lira up from its record low. The most recent increase in the benchmark rate was on Thursday and he was fired on Friday.

The annual inflation rate was officially 15.6 percent in February but is probably much higher.

The new central bank chief, Sahap Kavcioglu, a university professor and former member of Turkey’s National Assembly, said in a statement that he would continue to fight inflation. But on Monday, the lira was trading at about 7.77 to the dollar, compared with 7.22 on Friday. The plunge in value was a sign that currency traders expect him to bow to pressure from Mr. Erdogan to cut rates, worsening the inflation problem and pushing the country of 82 million people closer to economic collapse.

“We have abandoned our cautiously optimistic view on the lira,” Piotr Matys, a strategist at Rabobank wrote in a note. Mr. Kavcioglu’s comments suggest he is clearly in favor of lower interest rates to stimulate growth, he added.

  • The S&P 500 closed up 0.7 percent on Monday, while the Nasdaq composite finished the day up 1.2 percent and the Dow Jones industrial average gained 0.3 percent.

  • Yields on 10-Year Treasury notes fell to about 1.69 percent.

  • European indexes were mixed. The Stoxx Europe 600 index gained 0.2 percent, and London’s FTSE 100 gained 0.3 percent. France’s CAC 40 dropped about 0.5 percent.

  • Shares in IAG, the airline group which owns British Airways, fell more than 5 percent after the British government’s scientific advisers warned against overseas travel this summer. On Sunday, a government minister also indicated that travel restrictions could be extended. Shares in easyJet and Ryanair also fell.

  • Deliveroo, the food-delivery company, started taking orders for its initial public offering on Monday. The share sale would value the company up to 8.8 billion pounds ($12.2 billion). The company will be listed on the London Stock Exchange, and is the exchange’s largest I.P.O. this year.

The Upper East Side mansion once owned by Jeffrey Epstein.Credit…Kirsten Luce for The New York Times

A longtime executive at Goldman Sachs and his wife are the buyers of Jeffrey Epstein’s Upper East Side mansion, paying $51 million for the disgraced financier’s former home.

Michael D. Daffey, a former Goldman executive, and his wife, Blake Daffey, are getting Mr. Epstein’s seven-story Manhattan mansion at a considerable discount. The initial asking price was $88 million, but it received no takers. The estate of Mr. Epstein — who killed himself in 2019 while in custody and facing federal sex trafficking charges — put the house on the market less than a year after his death.

Mr. Daffey spent nearly three decades working at Goldman Sachs, and his recent retirement was disclosed in February. He was an early investor in Bitcoin.

While the sale was reported earlier this month, the buyers had not yet been identified until recently. The sale formally closed March 8, Vivian Marino reports for The New York Times, becoming one of New York City’s largest closings in March.

The Epstein mansion is just one location where he was accused of running his sex-trafficking operation. The money from the sale is expected to go to a compensation fund for victims.

A group of junior bankers at Goldman Sachs assembled a presentation about working conditions at the Wall Street bank that circulated on social media.Credit…Emon Hassan for The New York Times

Last week, a presentation by a group of junior bankers at Goldman Sachs went viral on social media, in which they complained about what they described as workplace abuse, including 100-hour weeks.

The DealBook newsletter’s inbox has been overflowing with reactions, notably from current, former and aspiring investment bankers. Here’s what some had to say — most requested anonymity to speak freely about their experiences — edited and condensed for clarity:

  • “My view is that if it’s not to your liking, quit and find another line of work. It won’t pay as well, but it’s also possible that you won’t learn as much. I am still reaping the benefits of what I learned.” — Anonymous in Sydney

  • “I had heard all about the long hours, but once I was in it, I found that I had underestimated. I threw in the towel and left banking, because no amount of money was worth the terrible lifestyle.” — Anonymous in New York

  • “I knew I was worked like a donkey but quid pro quo. I could leave, work fewer hours and make less money. But I wasn’t interested in that.” — Anonymous in London

  • “In our day, we may have complained to our friends or our family, but we knew that short-term pain was good for long-term gain. I now live a comfortable life enabled by my first years at Goldman Sachs.” — Anonymous in New York

  • “We would do the math on the compensation and realize that we were making less than minimum wage per hour. It wasn’t worth being tortured. My health still suffers from my years on Wall Street.” — Anonymous in New York

  • “The learning experience was incredible and career-wise it set me on the right track. In hindsight, it could have actually killed me, but I was too young to realize this.” — Anonymous in Dubai

  • “Yes, we were ‘abused’ and yelled at, but this was expected and how we learned. My message for these analysts is: If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.” — Anonymous in New York

  • “There is no money that rewards the mental and physical harm that investment banking does to you. Of course, it’s a hell of an experience, Excel and PowerPoint-wise.” — Anonymous in São Paulo

  • “I spent many long nights in the office at the behest of associates and V.P.s, most of the time for no reason but ‘they might need me.’ Then I joined the military, where I had better work-life balance and more respectful leadership than I did in banking.” — Anonymous in New York

  • “I am an incoming Goldman Sachs intern. I knew about the work conditions before applying to the job. Anyone engaging in a career at a top investment bank knows about it, or else they applied for the wrong reasons.” — Anonymous in Europe

Carlos Ghosn, the former chief executive of Nissan, is a fugitive after fleeing Japan, where he was facing charges of alleged financial misconduct, which he had denied.  Credit…Hussein Malla/Associated Press

Tokyo prosecutors on Monday charged two Americans with helping Carlos Ghosn, the former Nissan chief, jump bail in Tokyo, where he was awaiting trial on four counts of financial wrongdoing.

Japanese prosecutors said in an indictment that the two men, Michael Taylor, 60, a former Green Beret, and his son Peter Maxwell Taylor, 27, assisted Mr. Ghosn’s efforts to escape the country, helping him flee to Turkey and then on to Lebanon, where he has been beyond the reach of Japanese law.

American officials arrested the men last May in Massachusetts. Earlier this month, they were extradited to Japan, where they have been held in a Tokyo detention center while undergoing questioning by prosecutors. A third man believed to have aided Mr. Ghosn’s escape remains at large.

The Japanese authorities have accused Michael Taylor of helping Mr. Ghosn travel by train to the western city of Osaka, through security checks at a private jet terminal and then onto a plane bound for Turkey. Once there, Mr. Ghosn transferred to a flight bound for Beirut. Peter Taylor assisted in planning for the escapade, visiting Mr. Ghosn several times before the escape, officials say.

Mr. Ghosn and his son, Anthony Ghosn, paid more than $1.3 million to the Taylors and a company they controlled, U.S. prosecutors have said in court filings.

Mr. Ghosn’s case raised international concerns about what some critics call Japan’s system of “hostage justice,” which includes lengthy detentions of criminal suspects without charge. While in the United States, the Taylors fought a long legal battle to prevent their extradition, with their lawyers arguing that they could be subjected to harsh conditions in a Japanese jail.

  • Unions in Italy said they held a 24-hour strike against Amazon on Monday over a breakdown in talks over working conditions. The unions, representing delivery workers and warehouse employees, said they walked out for a day to protest excessive workloads while Amazon has earned huge profits during the pandemic. The three groups — Filt-Cgil, Fit-Cisl and Uiltrasporti — said an average of 75 percent of their memberships had taken part. A spokesman for Amazon said that only about 10 percent of its 9,500 Italian employees participated and that the strike did not cause any delays in shipments, orders or deliveries. He said Amazon already offers “excellent pay, excellent benefits and excellent opportunities for career growth.”

  • Leon Black, the Wall Street billionaire who was the main client of the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein for the last decade of his life, is stepping down as chief executive and chairman of Apollo Global Management, several months ahead of schedule, the firm said Monday. Jay Clayton, the former Securities and Exchange Commission chairman who recently joined the firm as an independent director, will take over as chairman. Mr. Black said he had decided to leave now to focus on his family and his and his wife’s health. In January, the firm had said he would step down as chief executive before his 70th birthday in July while retaining the chairman role.

  • Canadian Pacific and Kansas City Southern announced plans on Sunday to combine in a $29 billion deal that would create the first railroad network connecting the United States, Mexico and Canada. It is an effort to capitalize on the flow of trade that is expected to increase as the three countries rebound from the pandemic. The boards of both companies have unanimously approved the cash-and-stock deal, which is expected to close by the middle of 2022, subject to customary approvals.

  • Saudi Aramco, Saudi Arabia’s national oil company, said on Sunday that its net income last year had fallen by 44 percent, to $49 billion, as lower oil prices stemming from the pandemic cut into earnings. The company’s chief executive, Amin H. Nasser, described 2020 in a statement accompanying the earnings data as “one of the most challenging years in recent history.” But Aramco, the world’s largest oil producer, said that it would stick by a pledge to pay a $75 billion dividend. Nearly all of the payment will go to the Saudi government, which owns about 98 percent of the company.

VideoCinemagraphCreditCredit…By Alexis Jamet

In today’s On Tech newsletter, Shira Ovide talks to The Times’s Ben Sisario about why streaming music has been a letdown for many musicians.