thicc_girls_are_teh_best
Member
Funny...been over three hours yet no thread about it on ResetERA. Wonder why 
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FTC opens wide ranging investigation into Microsoft and it's practices
- Thread starter Kokoloko85
- Start date
I don’t believe this is a thing at all.
Recall is an optional feature that’s opt-in by default. Not exactly what the FTC looks at.
Barakov
Member
Blank Space Invader
Gold Member
StreetsofBeige
Gold Member
I always find it funny when the FTC brings up a case against a company and LOSES.
You'd think if any organization and people out there who should know the laws better than anyone else would be the government workers. You'd think it'd be a slam dunk if they got something on someone.
But hire a bunch of lawyers to represent your company and you can beat them calling out their bullshit case.
Go figure.
But it's no different than tax revenue people. You'd think they know better. Nope. I think most of them dont know what they are doing but are just trying to grab money hoping you dont know any better. Just making some blind assumptions.
When I sold an investment condo way back, I do it myself and paid income tax. A year later they came after me saying I understated tax submissions by $5,000. WTF? I went back and forth with them telling them here's my receipts. The $5,000 gap was due to them not calculating things assuming I was lying. So I guess on their end she assumed (a tax person in St Catharines Ont I had to correspond with) since it's a digital submission with no physical pile of receipts they classified them as $0. So I had to submit a folder of receipts as proof and she decreased it when I got a return letter back.
Then there was another time I got a letter in the mail regarding income tax regarding claiming if I moved or not. When you move primary residence in Canada youre supposed to tell even if moving primary residence has no tax implications. The letter said I need to claim I moved and to call a number if you got issues. I called the number and they said youre ok, we got your new address. I couldnt check my submission myself as my online tax submission file was on my old laptop I gave to my niece and dont want to go find it at their house. So it looks like I did submit my new move in address after all. So I asked why I got this letter if everything is ok? They said sometimes there's mistakes on their end but youre ok and here's a confirmation reference code in case you get asked again in the future.
So it goes to show how sketchy government services and tax departments can be.
These are anecdotal examples from my end. But my tip to you if you ever get a letter from the tax department. Dont panic. Chances are they are the ones who fucked up.
You'd think if any organization and people out there who should know the laws better than anyone else would be the government workers. You'd think it'd be a slam dunk if they got something on someone.
But hire a bunch of lawyers to represent your company and you can beat them calling out their bullshit case.
Go figure.
But it's no different than tax revenue people. You'd think they know better. Nope. I think most of them dont know what they are doing but are just trying to grab money hoping you dont know any better. Just making some blind assumptions.
When I sold an investment condo way back, I do it myself and paid income tax. A year later they came after me saying I understated tax submissions by $5,000. WTF? I went back and forth with them telling them here's my receipts. The $5,000 gap was due to them not calculating things assuming I was lying. So I guess on their end she assumed (a tax person in St Catharines Ont I had to correspond with) since it's a digital submission with no physical pile of receipts they classified them as $0. So I had to submit a folder of receipts as proof and she decreased it when I got a return letter back.
Then there was another time I got a letter in the mail regarding income tax regarding claiming if I moved or not. When you move primary residence in Canada youre supposed to tell even if moving primary residence has no tax implications. The letter said I need to claim I moved and to call a number if you got issues. I called the number and they said youre ok, we got your new address. I couldnt check my submission myself as my online tax submission file was on my old laptop I gave to my niece and dont want to go find it at their house. So it looks like I did submit my new move in address after all. So I asked why I got this letter if everything is ok? They said sometimes there's mistakes on their end but youre ok and here's a confirmation reference code in case you get asked again in the future.
So it goes to show how sketchy government services and tax departments can be.
These are anecdotal examples from my end. But my tip to you if you ever get a letter from the tax department. Dont panic. Chances are they are the ones who fucked up.
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StreetsofBeige
Gold Member
I remember reading an article that out of all the big tech cases FTC has done lately, they've won.... ZERO.
(Found a similar article saying it)
A zero-win track record on M&As
Two and a half years into Khan’s tenure, the FTC has lost every single merger challenge it has brought through litigation across both federal and administrative court without even a single win in litigation in cases as varied as Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard, Meta’s acquisition of Within, and Illumina’s acquisition of Grail, to name just a few.
Khan is currently appealing several of those losses, but all the appeals that have been ruled on have failed, too. Simply put, no judicial ruling or appeal on blocking a merger has ever gone Khan’s way. The anti-merger litigation track record of Khan’s allies at the DOJ Antitrust Division, led by Jonathan Kanter, is similarly bad, except for one notable success when Judge Florence Pan blocked the Simon & Schuster deal in litigation.
The FTC’s Antitrust Overreach Is Hurting U.S. Competitiveness and Destroying Value
Yale SOM’s Jeffrey Sonnenfeld and Steven Tian write that FTC chair Lina Khan’s attempts to block mergers are draining economic value—and consistently failing in court.
insights.som.yale.edu
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BlueLyria
Member
Yeah, and honestly, I understand completely.
The time to split any big tech company is way past due, they should've done it about 25 to 20 years ago, the world is completely different, and splitting MS or any of the other important big tech companies / divisions will open up the US for foreign interference, because China will not split any of their big tech companies, specially if they can get a foothold on the us. Right now I can't see any government official thinking it's a good idea, the cons are way bigger than the pros.
And as you said, consumer facing divisions are probably the easiest to just split, X, Facebook, Instagram, those honestly could be split without any big impact, though it'll probably not be a discussion because of the tik tok panic politicians had a few years ago.
edit: minor spelling mistake, don't write while working y'all
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ShaiKhulud1989
Gold Member
Wow, second season of my favorite show came out of nowhere. Time to grab some snacks.
Daniel_Mallorca1985
Member
FTC against MS-ABK???
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StereoVsn
Gold Member
Yep, have to step careful with tech, but it’s certainly possible to force unbundling of certain product and sell off of particularly troubling parts of company that are causing unfair competition.
For Social Media, there is no value lost if you force them to break up. For example, make Meta spinoff Threads/Instagram or WhatsApp.
StereoVsn
Gold Member
You don’t have to believe. You can go to Microsoft business licensing and read about differences for Microsoft 365 licenses which include Windows for endpoints and Office 365 licenses and then add Windows license on top.
Better yet talk to proper Enterprise license reseller and ask about discounts.
For Recall, it’s “optional” in a sense that you can turn it off, although considering it’s MS, you know they will f that up somewhere.
It’s NOT optional in its dependencies in a lot of lower level libraries in the system and even things like File Explorer. It also thus offers a new rich target for hackers and potential to abuse by MS themselves. And if you don’t think either of these is a possibility, I have an amazing bridge in Brooklyn to sell!
And you just know MS will turn that shit on “by accident” during some of their yearly updates as they have done with other user configurable settings.
thicc_girls_are_teh_best
Member
One of the worst cheerleaders for when MS was buying ABK, back at it again. Yes it's very easy for the FTC to go after a $3 trillion mega-conglomerate who has their hands deep in the pockets of the US government the FTC directly works within.
Great big brain deduction there.
You don’t have to believe. You can go to Microsoft business licensing and read about differences for Microsoft 365 licenses which include Windows for endpoints and Office 365 licenses and then add Windows license on top.
Better yet talk to proper Enterprise license reseller and ask about discounts.
For Recall, it’s “optional” in a sense that you can turn it off, although considering it’s MS, you know they will f that up somewhere.
It’s NOT optional in its dependencies in a lot of lower level libraries in the system and even things like File Explorer. It also thus offers a new rich target for hackers and potential to abuse by MS themselves. And if you don’t think either of these is a possibility, I have an amazing bridge in Brooklyn to sell!
And you just know MS will turn that shit on “by accident” during some of their yearly updates as they have done with other user configurable settings.
They keep turning back on Focus Assist even when I never enable the feature, and have to keep turning it off from time to time (W10).
John Wick
Member
Finally!
This corrupt grassing company needs a thorough investigation. They are far far worse than Google and Apple. They love pointing fingers at others and crying like bitches but are guilty of worse antitrust behaviour.
Kerotan
Member
Yeah Trump is no fan of the mainstream. This is company wide but at the very least MS need to be banned from buying more publisher's.
BlueLyria
Member
Without a shadow of a doubt, unbundling would make a bit more space for the office suite competition, but it's a incredibly small space right now, you either pick Google or Microsoft. In the OS space I feel like it's a done deal, Windows is the default, and unless we get close to 100% compatibility and familiar interface on a competitor, things won't change. Even though at this point I feel like we should break compatibility and stop trying to support codebases from 20+ years ago, even though a lot of software will break, the next barrier for PC performance should be on updating our CPU instructions.
Social media is the easiest one to deal with because when it comes to user data, the gov already has everything they want, for both domestic and foreign users, so there's no real interest besides data resellers and analysts lobbying for them.
noob smokes
Member
They got a hard on for ms 
StereoVsn
Gold Member
Large Corpo stans never cease to amaze me with their sheer boot licking ability. Mind you, I can understand if someone holds lots of particular Corpo stocks or works for the company, but that's not what usually happens. Sigh...
One of the worst cheerleaders for when MS was buying ABK, back at it again. Yes it's very easy for the FTC to go after a $3 trillion mega-conglomerate who has their hands deep in the pockets of the US government the FTC directly works within.
Great big brain deduction there.
They keep turning back on Focus Assist even when I never enable the feature, and have to keep turning it off from time to time (W10).
And yeah, trusting MS not to pull shenanigans would be incredibly naive.
StereoVsn
Gold Member
Bundling though on MS side is preventing competition. And yeah, part of the reason MS and Google need to be slapped is because they greatly stifled the competition. On OS side, I am seeing Linux and Mac slowly make some inroads even on corporate environments. Which is why its crucial to ensure MS, Google, Amazon don't essentially have an oligopoly on cloud services.
Badlucktroll
Member
They tried to break up MS before, in the 90s
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BacklashWave534
Member
I never once heard him say that as it would be a massively unpopular position to take with his base. Need to see a legit source please. CNN, NYT and MSNBC don't count.
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Wolzard
Member
thicc_girls_are_teh_best
Member
That's hilarious considering he's now got an AI on Twitter (X) training on artwork from artists without their consent.
I wouldn't be surprised if they were already doing that (not just with artwork but uploaded images in general) prior to the public announcement in the TOS update. But basically, all these billionaires and Big Tech corpos, they're all the same. They're all greedy, power-hungry, smug and see themselves as gods.
So it's at least kind of amusing to see them go after one another and expose their own hypocrisies.
This was the big reason the CMA and EC were so adamant about cloud when MS were trying to acquire ABK. Stupid people like Tru1paya and other "gamers" cheerleading that deal only saw it from an Xbox vs. PlayStation POV. They didn't even stop to consider how all that data and pipeline integration would have benefits to Windows, Azure, Office etc.
It's not like Xbox hasn't been under other MS divisions before, or these divisions haven't shared resources to each other's benefits in the past (and continue to).
IntentionalPun
Ask me about my wife's perfect butthole
ExtendEmbraceExtinguish
Member
Well said. People forget regulation and deregulation are tied to the broader world economy.
ExtendEmbraceExtinguish
Member
Agreed and I still backed msft Xbox endeavors knowing fully well how it will be integrated into the msft ecosystem. Glad to know someone else knows it’s bigger than the idiotic console wars.
BlueLyria
Member
Closer to a love tap on the shaft than a kickLast kick in the balls to MS before lina leaves.
Yep, cloud might be the next battlefield to try and stop any singular company's domination, issue is: If the US is too heavy handed in their approach, China could easily refit some of their services for the western market.
MarkMe2525
Banned
I imagine it is in the US's Government's best interest to keep MS in check, but strong and prevalent. You leave a gap in the market too wide, and it could potentially get filled with foreign (to America) owned software. Look at how they freaked out when TikTok was on everyone's phones, now imagine that is a computer OS.
edit: I originally said "imagine that is a search browser", but that would apply more to Google, not MS.
edit: I originally said "imagine that is a search browser", but that would apply more to Google, not MS.
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Bernardougf
Member
Really... you live in this corrupt shithole and still is surprised that a trillion dollar company "passed" regulators quickly? ... lol I can imagine the absolut festivities in that office as soon as the process arrived "honey about that trip to Maldives... pack your bags"
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BacklashWave534
Member
As i stated. NYT is NOT a reputable source.
bitbydeath
Member
If anything should be looked into it’s that, and government officials should get no say.
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Topher
Identifies as young
“… Consistent with an unfortunate trend:” Microsoft accuses FTC of improperly leaking confidential information about antitrust investigation, says to 'investigate yourself'
Microsoft is flipping the tables on the FTC, asking it to investigate itself over an alleged leak of “hundreds of pages” of materials to the press.
www.windowscentral.com
Kind of funny considering Microsoft leaked their own documents during the ABK investigation
IntentionalPun
Ask me about my wife's perfect butthole
The source is a Trump speech, reported in by loads of people:
Topher
Identifies as young
Here's the reality (ignore the headline):
Donald Trump considers tough antitrust advocate for justice department unit
Gail Slater is ally of JD Vance who had also been in running to chair Federal Trade Commissionwww.ft.com
You were right.
Trump selects Andrew Ferguson as pick for Federal Trade Commission chair | CNN Politics
President-elect Donald Trump has selected Andrew Ferguson as his choice for Federal Trade Commission chair.
www.cnn.com
Chiggs
Gold Member
You were right.
Trump selects Andrew Ferguson as pick for Federal Trade Commission chair | CNN Politics
President-elect Donald Trump has selected Andrew Ferguson as his choice for Federal Trade Commission chair.
Trump Announces Andrew Ferguson as FTC Chair Nominee Amid Antitrust Policy Uncertainty | PYMNTS.com
President-elect Donald Trump has revealed his choice of Andrew Ferguson as the next chair of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), signaling potential
www.pymnts.com
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Orbital2060
Member
The concept of video games is basically forgiving, you can't %100 held anyone accountable, it's the truth.
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DeVeAn
Member
Yeah, they are destroying Sony and Nintendo!
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