Oliver

The tech antitrust debate in Washington, D.C., is coming to a head, with Senate leadership likely to bring new antitrust legislation to a full floor debate as soon as this month. At issue are a pair of bills cosponsored and championed by Senator Amy Klobuchar, a Minnesota Democrat: the American Innovation and Choice Online Act, which would prohibit tech platforms from favoring their own products; and the Open App Markets Act, which would give smartphone users more ways to buy apps than just the major Apple and Google app…

Comedian John Oliver decided to wade into the antitrust battleground this week, and he didn’t hold back any punches.Oliver devoted 25 minutes of his most recent Last Week Tonight show to discuss general Big Tech badness and advocated in favor of a pair of historic antitrust bills currently being considered in Congress. The comedian zeroes in on claims made by advocacy groups and small businesses that giants like Google and Meta engage in anti-competitive, self-preferencing behavior that essentially cements their status as…

Years ago, John Oliver galvanized his Last Week Tonight viewers to join in the fight for net neutrality — instigating a flood of comments that broke down the Federal Communications Commission’s website in 2014. Last night, he turned his attention to a pair of upcoming tech antitrust bills. During his Sunday night show, Oliver explained the ways large tech companies rule the internet. From Apple and Google taking huge cuts from app store sales to Amazon’s stranglehold on the online sellers’ market, Oliver outlined how…

There are few things John Oliver delights in more than ripping on AT&T, which ultimately owns HBO and Last Week Tonight, and which Oliver likes to refer to as “business daddy.” So when Oliver gave viewers a brief history lesson about how the U.S. government has historically moved to break up harmful business monopolies, he naturally focused on AT&T, which until the 1980s had a monopoly on all telephone service in the country. He pointed out that once AT&T was broken up, prices dropped and innovation soared,…

Last Week Tonight took last weekend off, meaning tonight’s episode was John Oliver’s first since the May 24 Uvalde, Texas school shooting in which 19 children and two teachers were massacred. So it was no surprise that Oliver devoted the show to the never-ending gun control debate. This time, he focused on putting cops in schools, which has been pretty much the only action taken in response to school shootings since Columbine in 1999. Thing is, about the only thing those cops — euphemistically called School Resource…

John Oliver kicked off his main story about Subway with a quick reminder of some of the scandals the sandwich chain has endured over the years: The Irish Supreme Court declaring that Subway’s bread contains so much sugar that it can’t legally be called bread. Subway getting sued because their tuna is allegedly made with pork, chicken, and beef. An employee posting pics of himself on social media teabagging sandwich dough. And then there’s Jared Fogle, the popular Subway spokesperson who for years evangelized the health…

John Oliver began his main story by addressing one of his favorite subjects: weird mascots. This time it was Reddy Kilowatt, a character made of electrical outlets, lightbulbs, and bolts of electricity who for decades told people that the energy industry has their best interests at heart. Turns out, Reddy is a liar. Oliver provided several examples of utility companies all over the country fleecing customers — it was clear his staff didn’t have to look all that hard to find them — but he began with one of the most…

Tokyo Redux David Peace An astonishing conclusion to the trilogy Tokyo is that most modern of cities, the microchipped metropolis where vending machines and lavatory seats seem to have enough artificial intelligence to beat a Russian grandmaster at chess. But this hypermodernity has arrived alongside an extraordinary renunciation of violence by a society for so long considered synonymous with it. The army…