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Social Media Site Gab Sues Google For Antitrust Violations Following Ban From Play Store (washingtonpost.com)

The social media site Gab.ai is accusing Google of violating federal antitrust laws when the tech giant booted Gab from the Google Play Store, according to lawsuit filed this week. From a report: The legal action is the latest salvo in an escalating battle between right-leaning technologists and leaders against Silicon Valley giants such as Facebook and Google. Gab alleges in the lawsuit that "Google deprives competitors, on a discriminatory basis, of access to the App Store, which an essential facility or resource." "Google is the biggest threat to the free flow of information," Gab chief executive Andrew Torba said in a statement. "Gab started to fight against the big tech companies in the marketplace, and their monopolistic conduct has forced us to bring the fight to the courtroom." Alternative source.

6 of 164 comments (clear)

  1. Who is Gab? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Since the post doesn't mention it, I had to look it up. Gab.ai is claiming to be a "Free Speech" competitor to Twitter. Google banned them for "Hate Speech". A lot of users on that site seem to be Alt-Right types.

    More information
    http://www.businessinsider.com/google-app-store-gab-ban-hate-speech-2017-8

    1. Re:Who is Gab? by Kielistic · · Score: 5, Interesting

      You were called out for that exact falsehood 8 days ago and shown to be completely fabricating your "facts" (here). Yet here you are making the exact same lie again.

      Do you honestly wonder why people consider you a troll? This is a common pattern of behaviour from you. Make bullshit claim, get proved wrong, disappear, show up elsewhere making the exact same claim. If Gab bans left leaning people then you can prove it or at the very least find a non made-up claim about it.

      I don't know anything about Gab nor do I care to and I assume a lot of other people don't either. I assume that is why you feel safe making such brazen lies.

  2. Re:Monopoly by Derekloffin · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Well, the Internet Explorer case shows that having the technical ability to install other products does not negate the anti-trust issues. Also, Google is already in the social media biz so this could easily be argued to be them using their Android position to push out competition in the social media sphere. I'm sure Google will counter argue they carry many other competitors in their store in their defense though. Whether that will hold up though is questionable.

  3. Re:Sauce for the goose by DNS-and-BIND · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Negative. Christian bakers refused to bake a cake for a gay wedding because it's against their religion: fined $130,000.

    Muslim truck driver refused to deliver alcohol because it's against his religion: awarded $240,000.

    --
    Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
  4. Not in this case by DeplorableCodeMonkey · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Didn't the Supreme Court just rule that you can refuse to do business with someone for any reason you want?

    Sorta, but here's the kicker. Their specific reasons were "Gab allows hate" and then a lot of images showing Twitter openly tolerating hate speech came up. So now Google has to explain why they hold a startup to a MUCH higher standard than Twitter, particularly in light of a lot of people noticing that Twitter doesn't even bother to apply its rules fairly.

    So TL;DR this is now a potential case of collusion under anti-trust law to suppress competition to Twitter which puts it in a far more serious, long term possibly criminal, light.

  5. Re:Sauce for the goose by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Wow, you are trying to quote Snopes while being deliberately deceptive about what the article actually says, and what the facts of the two cases were.

    The only "false" part in the Snopes article is that Sharia was not imposed on the trucking company; rather the diver exercised his religious views. The company could have had someone else drive - there were alternatives available - but chose not to do so, despite the fact that it was no undue burden. So the driver won the lawsuit.

    In the Christian Baker case, the bakery was punished for exercising their religious views. There were alternate bakers available locally, so going to a different baker would have presented no undue hardship upon the customer. The obvious logical conclusion, following from the first case, would be that the party that had an alternative that was not an "undue burden" would lose.
    However, a very vocal Left-leaning judge in Left-leaning Oregon found that being denied a cake was a personal trauma so harmful that it deserved more than $100,000 in compensation.

    That's two contradictory outcomes. That's bias against Christians.