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JD Vance Says Big Tech Has 'Too Much Power' (cbsnews.com) 158

Vice President JD Vance said Saturday that "we believe fundamentally that big tech does have too much power," despite the prominent positioning of tech CEOs at President Trump's inauguration earlier this month. From a report: "They can either respect America's constitutional rights, they can stop engaging in censorship, and if they don't, you can be absolutely sure that Donald Trump's leadership is not going to look too kindly on them," Vance said on "Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan."

The comments came in response to the unusual attendance of a slate of tech CEOs at Mr. Trump's inauguration, including Meta's Mark Zuckerberg, Amazon's Jeff Bezos, Tesla's Elon Musk, Apple's Tim Cook, and Google's Sundar Pichai. The tech titans, some of whom are among the richest men in the world and directed donations from their companies to Mr. Trump's inauguration, were seated in some of the most highly sought after seats in the Capitol Rotunda.

Vance noted that the tech CEOs "didn't have as good of seating as my mom and a lot of other people who were there to support us." In an August interview on "Face the Nation", the vice president outlined his thinking on big tech, saying that companies like Google are too powerful and censor American information, while possessing a "monopoly over free speech" that he argued ought to be broken up.

JD Vance Says Big Tech Has 'Too Much Power'

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  • Yeah (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Bahbus ( 1180627 )

    Because of people like you and your party. I swear JD Vance has an IQ of 2. It's amazing he remembers to breathe.

    • Because of people like you and your party. I swear JD Vance has an IQ of 2. It's amazing he remembers to breathe.

      That's not the problem. JD Vance is not stupid, and that's the real danger. He has shown himself to be a political opportunist who will go whatever the way the wind blows. That is dangerous. If MAGA folded and all of a sudden D's were his path to power he'd be all "I was on drugs, but I'm sober now."

      • Re:Yeah (Score:5, Informative)

        by MachineShedFred ( 621896 ) on Monday January 27, 2025 @03:56PM (#65123085) Journal

        Every job he's ever had after leaving the USMC was greased in some way by Peter Thiel, and now he's saying that the broligarchy has too much power.

        Sounds like he's pissed that he's VP-in-name-only, and one of the broligarchs decided it was a more direct path with less latency and error to supplant him and let him spend his time breaking ties in the Senate and maintaining a heartbeat - his two Constitutionally mandated duties.

    • Well... (Score:2, Troll)

      by Brain-Fu ( 1274756 )

      It's also because most people continue to tolerate abuse from companies like Microsoft rather than make a serious effort at using open source alternatives.

      Want to defang the serpent? Stop paying 13 bucks a month for an office suite that you could replace with LibreOffice.

      Some edge-casey thing you need doesn't work? Pay the one-time cost of figuring that out (or hiring a consultant to figure it out) and save money from then on!

      • by Bahbus ( 1180627 )

        No. That is completely separate and irrelevant to what JD Vance, and I, am referring to.

        Open source or not has nothing to do with this. Microsoft's biggest abuses have always been the same as any other large corporation that wasn't punished in time. Continuing to pay for Office 365 has nothing to do with them having too much political power. Republicans have pushed to allow corporations to have more and more political power, so it shouldn't be shocking that the tech corps are the ones that with the most.

        • Argh I responded to the wrong post. Slashdot gives me no option to correct.

          I just pointed out that Microsoft's wealth is the source of their political power. So, take that away (by switching to open source) and you take their political power away, too.

          • by Bahbus ( 1180627 )

            Hate when that happens.

            I mean, while you aren't entirely wrong, it (theoretically) is simpler to just ban corporate involvement with the government. No lobbyists, no PACs, no gifts, no connections, etc.

            • The bans you propose are simpler in a high-level logical sense. But that doesn't make them easy to do.

              At its essence, money is just a form of power. We might call it "economic power" to draw a distinction between it and political power, but the overlap between the two is extremely high. So, separating the two is largely a fool's errand. One way or another the bans will be circumvented or just rendered ineffective.

              Like, for example, if you just wrote your congressional rep and asked them to legislate the

      • Money = political power.

        A significant shift to open source alternatives would make Microsoft significantly less wealthy, and therefore, significantly reduce Microsoft's political power.

    • by quenda ( 644621 )

      I swear JD Vance has an IQ of 2.

      You know how dumb Trump sounds when he talks about other people's low IQ? Like really dumb?
      Well, that is exactly how stupid you folks sound when you talk about Vance or Must being idiots.

        I swear you must be twice as dumb as Trump, because there is no way he is half as dumb as he sounds while getting half as far as he has. Math!

  • by Baron_Yam ( 643147 ) on Monday January 27, 2025 @12:50PM (#65122419)

    Vance and the Republican party only care about censorship that interferes with their interests. That happens to be the kind of stuff the tech companies don't want to be responsible for and drives 'engagement' anyway.

    What he's really saying is that disinformation and hate speech are gonna have a good day in America.

    • If they try to bind their hands too hard it'll be counterproductive, like if they banned spam filters on email accounts... the services would just become even more unusable than they already are.
    • They do have an economic issue. The advertisers who keep them in business prefer to have their ads next to non-toxic content.

      • by mysidia ( 191772 )

        The advertisers who keep them in business prefer to have their ads next to non-toxic content.

        Advertisers never seemed to care much until social media came into play. When using a search engine you would find banner ads for large companies on all kind of searches. Including searches on the toxic topics. They were never censored before;
        it seems like some larger companies placing ads have become too powerful and too demanding within recent years, and that would be your main issue.

        The solution is probabl

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by alvinrod ( 889928 )
      I wouldn't expect either of the major U.S. political parties to act on principle. As concerning as the possibility of censorship (whether government directed or of their own accord) is, I think the bigger issues are related to privacy. I never used any of Google's social media platforms over the years so I wasn't particularly concerned if there were things I could not say on them (and generally don't believe I have the right to use their platform as my own soap box anyway) but they as a company likely have
    • Most of the big 5 gave Trump a million dollars, I don't think that will go unnoticed when it comes to policy.

  • by methano ( 519830 ) on Monday January 27, 2025 @12:53PM (#65122423)
    I believe that the donation from Tim Cook was from his personal stash and not from Apple, the company he leads.
  • by thaylin ( 555395 ) on Monday January 27, 2025 @12:54PM (#65122429)

    Anyone who has read the constitution, or even any 1A jurisprudence, realizes that Americans do not have a constitutional right to free speech with respect to anyone but the federal government. 14A extends that to all governments, just like it does 2A. It does not however extend it to private entities like google. You may not like censorship, but that is a free market problem.

    • Came here to say this. Big tech does have too much power in a lot of ways, but basic 1A rights aren't one of them.

    • by sconeu ( 64226 )

      There may be case law otherwise, see Pruneyard Shopping Center v. Robins (447 US 74) [cornell.edu], where shopping centers were required to permit others to engage in speech on their property.

      (DISCLAIMER: I have skimmed the ruling but not read it in full)

      • by thaylin ( 555395 )

        Pruneyard is not about the US constitution, it is instead based on on the California constitution. It holds that the State can extend some protections for a limited amount free speech to people who were otherwise able to be on mall property to do other things, for a small number of orderly persons as long as it does not interfere with normal business operations (which ads would seemingly be a normal business operations.

        It also has exemptions for publishers, which all of these sites are.

        And to head it off,

      • by dfghjk ( 711126 )

        "[N]either property rights nor contract rights are absolute . . . Equally fundamental with the private right is that of the public to regulate it in the common interest. . . ."

        Yikes. Perhaps "equally fundamental" but not proportional. A right to regulate in the public interest does not mean to impose any regulation of private property as the public wants. This choice of language is disturbing.

    • by skam240 ( 789197 )

      Another thing folks often don't understand is that EVERYONE (including corporations) is entitled to free speech rights, not just themselves or the people who say things they like hearing. This means that a company has every right to take down posts on sites they control if they don't want to be promoting the messages users are posting. This also means people are fine being critical of what someone else has said.

    • by ClickOnThis ( 137803 ) on Monday January 27, 2025 @01:22PM (#65122547) Journal

      Anyone who has read the constitution, or even any 1A jurisprudence, realizes that Americans do not have a constitutional right to free speech with respect to anyone but the federal government.

      I like to put it this way: the First Amendment protects you and me from the government. It does not protect you and me from each other.

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by mysidia ( 191772 )

        The first amendment states that Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.

        It is not specific to anything about who is speaking or how. No law passed by the government can operate in a manner that allows the freedom of speech of the people to be restricted.

        Corporations are still ultimately established and governed by laws passed by congress.

        That means some 1st Amendment rights can extend to the Quasi public forums "owned" by private entities. Eg.

        It may be that in some i

        • by thaylin ( 555395 )

          Halleck v MNN defined when this is the case defining state action doctrine..

          The private entity must perform an action historically exclusive to the government (Marsh) or exercising government power, joint action, over trespass (Logan Valley).

    • by Registered Coward v2 ( 447531 ) on Monday January 27, 2025 @01:36PM (#65122609)

      Anyone who has read the constitution, or even any 1A jurisprudence, realizes that Americans do not have a constitutional right to free speech with respect to anyone but the federal government. 14A extends that to all governments, just like it does 2A. It does not however extend it to private entities like google. You may not like censorship, but that is a free market problem.

      But, but, but, what about. Yea, they're all about "protecting 1st amendment rights" as long as the right group , AKA MAGA, is the one being 'protected.' I swear, for a group that mocks libs as snowflakes they sure are butthurt that they are being oppressed. Barry Goldwater must be rolling in his grave.

    • by Petersko ( 564140 ) on Monday January 27, 2025 @02:20PM (#65122767)

      I'm done pointing out the tiny snippet that is the amendment, or discussing the nuances of its application. That's the futile pursuit of rationality and logic. Much like the Oxford dictionary recognizing that "literal" actually can mean "not literal", people should just accept what freedom of speech actually means to those who shout the phrase from the rooftops.

      They are not demanding adherence to the constitution. They are talking about an idealized version of free speech that meets their narrative. That version condemns anything that curtails their ability to transfer their ideas, and should not apply to anything that comes in conflict with them.

      This is what they mean, and pedantically demanding they reset their compass to point at the legal phrasing is pointless.This is about what free speech means to them. It's a feeling, and a guidepost. Not a law to be nitpicked.

    • Yep, quit using google if you don't like them

    • If the government compels private entities to censor, this is government censorship. The government can't compel a private entity to do something that the government can't do directly. There is an argument that the Biden administration crossed the line when it came to censorship of vaccine misinformation. There are many Facebook/Meta users whose entire day consists of sharing vaccine misinformation. And FB is welcome to let them do so. That's a business decision. It's not one that I think is very smar
      • by thaylin ( 555395 )

        Compel is a keyword, and until Trump took over Zuck was clear there was no compelling, it was just their choice, and if there was compulsion then Meta could have sued to stop that.

        The government cannot compel them to take action, it can however ask them.

        • This is NOT a private human. this is a private organization defined by and existing within the government's power. it IS government privately owned and managed. All it's power exists by government. It's legal property rights for example, all defined entirely by government and enforced by government - and if they enforce it with their own army that is limited or banned by government. The stock shares etc, all gov rules and regs.

          Now if you want to be any sort of bigot that is your right; but if you want cor

    • Anyone who has read the constitution, or even any 1A jurisprudence, realizes that Americans do not have a constitutional right to free speech with respect to anyone but the federal government. 14A extends that to all governments, just like it does 2A. It does not however extend it to private entities like google. You may not like censorship, but that is a free market problem.

      In exchange for the privilege of conducting public commerce private organizations necessarily give up some of their rights to balance the competing interests of the public. As seen in rulings similar to Marsh v AL the government has a role in protecting the rights of its citizens against the interests of private corporations.

    • As I see it, there are three separate issues here.

      First, does the First Amendment or any other law guarantee free speech rights against private entities? As it stands now, my understanding is there is no such guarantee. The legislature may change that or the courts may decide to drastically reinterpret the First Amendment, but barring that, this will probably remain the state of affairs going into the future.

      Second, should there be such a guarantee? I think this is a more interesting question. I don't
      • The point that you're missing here is that online forums are not "real" property in the sense that the old-timey "town square" is. They're not land that just exists. Every one, from the smallest blog with comments enabled all the way up to Facebook, is the product of peoples' time, money, and labor, built up from whole cloth where noting existed before... and most likely not your time, money, and labor; and most likely not the government's. And we have a word for people who presumptuously decide that the

        • The point that you're missing here is that online forums are not "real" property in the sense that the old-timey "town square" is. They're not land that just exists.

          Why does it matter? Someone develops a cyberspace that didn't exist before. Someone else develops a company town that didn't exist before. What's the difference? What cyberspace, malls and floating cities have in common is members of the public are there and ones rights do not magically evaporate the moment they step onto a privately owned public place.

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Anyone who has read the constitution, or even any 1A jurisprudence, realizes that Americans do not have a constitutional right to free speech with respect to anyone but the federal government.

      Myth. Some of the Founding Fathers were well aware of the dangers to human rights and to liberty posed by private entities. The Honorable East India Company had it's own army and armed ships that could function as a navy. There were other equally scary private entities that abused monopolies or other power granted or allowed by government in England/Scotland/Ireland/Wales - including various religious organizations. This history was well documented at the time and part of the education of any educated a

  • by smooth wombat ( 796938 ) on Monday January 27, 2025 @12:54PM (#65122433) Journal

    This is the same guy who says professors are the enemy. People educating your children and grand-children are the enemy. Let that sink in.

    Then again, it's understandable. The convicted felon has said he loves the poorly educated, so Vance's comment fits right in with keeping people stupid.

    • by Rinnon ( 1474161 )
      I can't help but wonder how long it will take for this attitude/trend to bankrupt America of all it's intellectual capacity.
  • You report to Elon Musk. You had your chance to define your position but you were too busy claiming people were eating cats to care. Maybe if Trump chokes on a Cheeseburger you will become relevant, until then sit down and STFU. And no the American public are not your baby production factory.

    • Re: (Score:2, Troll)

      by dfghjk ( 711126 )

      He reports to Peter Thiele, a frenemy of Melonia Musk. Peter Thiele likes men who wear mascara.

    • You report to Elon Musk. You had your chance to define your position but you were too busy claiming people were eating cats to care. Maybe if Trump chokes on a Cheeseburger you will become relevant, until then sit down and STFU. And no the American public are not your baby production factory.

      Exactly, Elon Musk paid more than a quarter of a billion dollars to get his power. And now these cheapskates are asking for some consideration for a mere million after the fact?!?

      They're multi-billionaires! If they want to tell Vance what to do then they need to pay up like multi-billionaires!!

  • I love that he seems to believe the only things of any substance produced by the American tech industry are social media websites.

  • I'm sure this magic culling of tech power will somehow be worded in a way that touches every tech billionaire who isn't Vance's patron, Peter Thiel, and related companies like Palantir.
  • by Fons_de_spons ( 1311177 ) on Monday January 27, 2025 @01:15PM (#65122513)
    Vance, quit the Elon bashing already. I placed a bet that Musk was going to divorce (violently) from Trump in 2026, not next week.
  • How stupid are we? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by haggie ( 957598 )

    That is what he was TOLD to say by Big Tech...

  • by Beryllium Sphere(tm) ( 193358 ) on Monday January 27, 2025 @01:24PM (#65122559) Journal

    Nobody has a 1A right to trespass on your servers, or Zuckerberg's, or Musk's.

    https://xkcd.com/1357/ [xkcd.com] as everyone has seen.

    I'd like to see an honest administration do antitrust action which might alleviate problems like the suppression (NOT censorship) of abortion information: https://www.emarketer.com/cont... [emarketer.com]

    • In terms from XKCD, It's definitely a way to see it. Although as the world evolves, we as a society collectively view these places to be the new town square.

      https://about.fb.com/news/2019... [fb.com]

      Well is it, or isn't it? I don't know how to think of it other than false advertising. You're providing your data and in turn not receiving the services that you in turn traded for.

  • So, I was always under the impression that the federal constitution described the relationship between the federal government and everyone else.

  • by tiqui ( 1024021 ) on Monday January 27, 2025 @01:37PM (#65122617)

    Note this little tidbit:

    "The comments came in response to the unusual attendance of a slate of tech CEOs at Mr. Trump's inauguration, including Meta's Mark Zuckerberg, Amazon's Jeff Bezos, Tesla's Elon Musk, Apple's Tim Cook, and Google's Sundar Pichai. The tech titans, some of whom are among the richest men in the world and directed donations from their companies to Mr. Trump's inauguration, were seated in some of the most highly sought after seats in the Capitol Rotunda."

    The implication the reader is intended to absorb is that these "tech titans" supported Trump in the election. With the exception of Musk, they did NOT. They all opposed Trump during the election and funded his opponent, Harris (who spent more than half a BILLION dollars more than Trump on the campaign). What's going on here is NOT a bunch of rich tech oligarchs buying our government and getting the government they want, this is a different form of corruption: the people who opposed the winner showed up at the winner's celebration and helped fund the parties [celebratory, not political] in order to try to try to smooth-out the relationship between their big money interests and the politician they opposed, but who now has power. This is a form of corruption of our politics that has for too long been standard and bipartisan in this country, and it's more corruption on the part of the elites than on the politicians of either party. Let's face it: if you're a politician who gets into office with the money of a rich guy, you [and he] will assume you owe him, but if he funds your opponent and then comes grovelling with a gift after you win anyway you're likely only to be less mad at him than feel you owe him. This is not an R vs D thing; it's a human nature thing.

    This sort of spin is done by writers on both the left and the right and we all need to recognize it for what it is.

    • by bussdriver ( 620565 ) on Monday January 27, 2025 @04:09PM (#65123109)

      you have no idea what was spent on Trump. It likely was far more money. tons of dark money. How does one value the cost of a top cable news channel being a full time propaganda machine for Trump? Or Facebook not stopping Cambridge analytica 2.0 like they did in 2020? Or the alternative online creations to promote trump? The youtube influencers funded heavily by Putin? (that we know about!) Twitter's purposeful efforts in addition to whatever troll farm Putin got running again... I remember when sanctions changed trending on twitter for like a month before it went back to trending fascists to the top again. The Washington Post was being undermined a while before it became obvious; even so, it wasn't a propaganda tool, it was fairly honest back then and not a "left" biased paper. Biden was going after big tech where it hurts and they weren't doing anywhere near as much to help... not that they ever did a lot.

      If Trump renames the Gulf and you resist you're the enemy communist or fascist or whatever word diarrhea spews out. Reality is under attack. A real Republican is called a RINO; ironically.

      The "both sides" BS may still work on slower people but more people are realizing the con. Just too slowly. Bet you don't know what playing the ref is either.

    • So not really. (Score:5, Informative)

      by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Monday January 27, 2025 @05:46PM (#65123419)
      When all was said and done the big donors gave about 250 million to Kamala Harris.

      On the other hand when all was said and done they gave about 2 billion to Trump.

      Big donors basically means billionaires here and that includes the tech Titans.

      Have you noticed all that talk from Trump and company about cutting two trillion in government waste? Ever wonder why that figure is so specific? It's because 2 trillion is roughly the total amount of income tax collected every year.

      As right-wingers are so fond of pointing out high income earners pay about half of that. Now mind you middle income earners pay more taxes overall both as a percentage of their income and just as a raw number because there are a wide variety of taxes that target them that do not or barely apply to billionaires. Billionaires for example don't pay a hell of a lot of sales tax.

      So what's going on here is Trump, and really the billionaires who gave him all that money, are trying to do away with income tax and replace it with a national sales tax. This is a why you keep hearing them talk about using tariffs to replace income tax.

      If they pull it off you can expect your tax burden to roughly double. Because the money the 1% are paying now will go away and somebody's going to have to make up that difference. That's somebody is you.

      So take a moment and look at your tax returns from last year. Now double that number. That's your tax burden under Donald Trump's proposed tax plan.

      Mark Zuckerberg thanks you for your service citizen.
    • This is a form of corruption of our politics that has for too long been standard and bipartisan in this country, and it's more corruption on the part of the elites than on the politicians of either party.

      No, the thousands of donations to both sides in return for getting your call taken post-election was the standard bipartisan corruption.

      What you're seeing now is fascism. It's the government signalling that big business must pay fealty to the ruling party and do their bidding or they will be punished.

      "They can either respect America's constitutional rights, they can stop engaging in censorship, and if they don't, you can be absolutely sure that Donald Trump's leadership is not going to look too kindly on them,"

      And yes, the Democrats also pressured social media to moderate misinformation. But like with most things the Trump admin is taking a minor transgression by the other side and using it as an excuse to do whateve

  • Translation : They don't care that the lack of antitrust and government action has let capitalism enshittify into a dystopian oligarchy of cyber-surveillance and corporate propaganda posing as consumer products and social networks. They're only concerned about the fact that some people push back when you say harmful and hateful stuff against others.
  • by SvnLyrBrto ( 62138 ) on Monday January 27, 2025 @02:15PM (#65122751)

    WTF is Vance's problem here? Didn't he watch the very same inauguration he himself took part in? Did he not notice all the "big tech" people there to bend the knee and pledge their fealty to dear leader? Didn't he notice when Bezos took away WaPo's journalistic independence and turned it into a MAGA mouthpiece? (Or when the LA Times' owner did the same thing; but I don't think that was a tech guy.) Didn't he notice when the zuck terminated facebook's moderation and fact check teams and declared that it would be a MAGA-compliant platform moving forward? Didn't he notice literally everything the muskrat has said or done for the last half-decade or so? Shit... even Tim Cook was there to kiss the ring, prostrate himself, kowtow, and pledge himself and Apple to the MAGA agenda.

    "Big tech" capitulated. "Big tech" is on his and trump's side. "Big tech" has committed to doing his master's bidding.

  • Hi, I'm Leon Musk, and I'm the most powerful unelected man in the world.
    Hi, I'm Mark Fuckerberg, the second most powerful man in the world.
    Hi, I'm Microsoft. I'm going to ingest all content on the web.

    Stop me if you can.

    Hint: you can't.
  • Saying big tech has too much power is like saying corporations and capitalists have too much power.

  • If JD won't stop lying, our recourse is to ignore the fabulist.
  • Musk has convinced Trump that we need to go to mars. So, maybe the problem is that Trump is so damn gullible, not that big tech is so powerful.

    Every big tech executive contributed to and attended the inauguration. Any tech company not toeing the Trump line is engaging in censorship. So, it's not that big tech is too powerful. It's that big tech needs to bow before Trump and put all of its resources at the disposal of the orange destruction apparatus. Vance's point is that big tech needs to be controlled b
  • He would like a word with you please report to his office down the hall.
  • Indeed, break up Meta. Require social media services to freely allow consumers to manage and move their data from platform to platform. Invest in broadband infrastructure so that more people can host their own nodes on decentralized platforms.

    This won't happen. For one, they don't care for free speech, they want freedom from consequences.

    Also, the value of social networks comes from their size, so monopolies will continue to exist. The best you could hope for is a non-profit organization to step into the sp

  • In-Q-Tel [wikipedia.org] (IQT), formerly Peleus and In-Q-It, is an American not-for-profit venture capital firm based in Arlington, Virginia”

    In-Q-Tel: The Central Intelligence Agency as Venture Capitalist [northwestern.edu]
  • ... stop engaging in censorship ...

    He is one more right-wing autocrat whinging he is the victim. Vance is showing the flip-flopping news/social media giants, they another whore for Trump/Vance to ride, as they please. This is one more step in demanding everyone else, obey Trump and prove their fealty.

    There's a reason for demanding obedience, no matter the personal cost (fealty): Fealty is a 'socialize' (the exceptionalism of the party is responsible) the wins and privatize (that person made bad choices and must be punished) the losses.

  • I see, Vance's whole objection to tech power is not the potential threat to democracy of billionaires having the ear of the president and funding campaigns or in holding data on a global user base. No, his worry is that tech companies use censorship (and presumably other nefarious tactics, like fact checking)

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