Microsoft Whistleblower Document Exposes Microsoft Helped Write Big Tech Bills
Microsoft Whistleblower leaked a JM classified document to Representative Thomas Massie exposing that Microsoft may have had access to the Big Tech bills before Congress.
“I just came into possession of a document that everyone needs to know about,” Thomas Massie said during the ‘Judiciary Committee markup of the legislation’ on Wednesday. “It’s marked ‘CONFIDENTIAL – Microsoft.’ A whistleblower provided this. It’s the first draft of one of these bills that would’ve covered Microsoft. This begs the question: did Microsoft have this bill and the other bills that we are voting on today before I had this bill?”
https://twitter.com/judiciarygop/status/1407796753378824200?s=20
The original version had a much lower threshold of “active users” than the current version. The original version provided by the whistleblower set that number of active users at 500,000, where the current version sets that limit to 50 million users.
Microsoft responded “We did not seek to be excluded from the bills,” said Microsoft’s spokesperson Jennifer Crider, adding the company had “more than 50 millions monthly active users.”
Congress first unveiled their bipartisan antitrust bills earlier this month.
However, a separate modification to the original bill could render Windows exempt from these antitrust regulations. The first version defined “online platform” as an “operating system” while the latest version defines it as a “mobile operating system”.
“The [latest version] limited [the definition of ‘online platform’] to only ‘mobile online platforms,” Democratic Rep. Zoe Lofgren said during Wednesday’s hearing “That had the effect, for the most part, of exempting Microsoft from coverage of the bill.”
“That’s what we have here: Bills that supposedly go after Big Tech being written by Big Tech,” Representative Jim Jordan stated
https://twitter.com/jim_jordan/status/1407807615770542097?s=20
https://www.scribd.com/document/512866122/Daily-Caller-News-Foundation-Microsoft-Received-Confidential-Antitrust-Bill?secret_password=n8LsgMhpQ0nXFmLjUIgv