Things are looking anything but on the up-and-up for Jeff Bezos, whose Amazon empire is showing signs of a major breach now that Big Fed has finally decided to hold the tech giant accountable for its monopolistic practices.
As part of a sweeping probe into the censorship crimes of many Big Tech corporations, Amazon is now the subject of a massive investigation by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), which is sure to uncover all sorts of illegal activity by the online retail behemoth.
After it was announced that Amazon is one of the FTC's main investigatory targets, Wall Street responded by selling off a big chunk of the company's shares, plunging Amazon's value to a level below its 200-day daily moving average (DMA).
According to reports, Amazon's shares went down roughly 3.75 percent following the announcement, leaving them at a value of $1,710 – this drop testing the potential support of the 38.2 percent Fibonacci retracement of Amazon's December low to its May peak.
While the FTC's inquiry into Amazon's business practices has not yet materialized into an actual, formal investigation, one could potentially take place in the future depending on how this first phase progresses.
"Amazon controls around half of all online retail in the U.S., is the biggest cloud computing provider in the world, and even its side business – online advertising – is large enough to make it the third-biggest ad platform in the U.S., trailing only Google and Facebook," writes Jason Del Rey for Vox.com.
For more stories like this one, be sure to check out Censorship.news.
Market cap for top three most valuable tech companies has plunged well below $1 trillion
It's not just Amazon that's now facing the ire of federal antitrust investigators. Google is also under investigation by the Department of Justice (DOJ) for censorship, bias, and other corruption involving violations of free speech and the First Amendment.
Other tech giants are also under the gun for similar crimes, which would explain why tech shares at large are now on the decline. According to reports, the market cap of the top three most valuable tech companies in the U.S. is now well below $1 trillion – and they likely have a lot further to go.
According to officials, the FTC is heading up the Amazon probe, while the DOJ is heading up the Google probe – with the rest to be divvied up between the two depending on jurisdictional capacity and ability.
The DOJ will be looking specifically into Google's questionable advertising and search business practices, while the FTC will probe Amazon's pricing structure, logistics, competitive practices against its own sellers, and Prime bundling of services.
Earlier in the year, the FTC actually set up a special task force, the job of which is to monitor "tech and competition," including "investigating any potential anticompetitive conduct in those markets, and taking enforcement actions when warranted."
"Break[ing] up Big Tech" is the major running platform of 2020 Democratic hopeful Elizabeth Warren, who's promised to address consumer protection issues if elected president. But President Trump would seem to be tackling this now, which means Warren will have to find something new to promise to voters.
"This should be a wake-up call to both Google and Amazon to behave themselves because it at least shows that the Justice Department and FTC are thinking about them," says Gene Kimmelman, president of the Washington, D.C.-based consumer advocacy group Public Knowledge.
"This is more of a warning to the companies that they're being carefully scrutinized and they need to be careful not to play fast and loose given their dominant positions in the digital marketplace."
To learn more about your online free speech rights, be sure to check out FirstAmendment.news.
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