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  3. The U.S. and China don’t agree on much these days. Germany and France share

The U.S. and China don’t agree on much these days. Germany and France share

游客2024-03-07  24
问题     The U.S. and China don’t agree on much these days. Germany and France share a border and a currency but are frequently at odds. The U.K. and India like to march to their own drum. But there’s one issue on which all these countries see eye to eye: Technology companies are too big, too powerful, and too profitable. And that power is only likely to intensify, leaving governments with no choice but to confront it head-on by taking the companies to court, passing new competition laws, and perhaps even breaking up the tech giants.
    China is the latest to implement an anti-trust crackdown, unveiling anti-monopoly rules last month. The draft rules followed the surprise suspension of a $37 billion stock offering by billionaire Jack Ma’s Ant Group Co., making clear that no company can evade the government’s regulation. The moves in China coincide with accelerating efforts in the U.S. and Europe to rein in Amazon.com, Apple, Facebook, and Google.
    "The big get bigger and bigger but without being better," says Andreas Schwab, a German member of the European Parliament who championed a 2014 resolution to break up Google. "Growing economic power, growing influence on local markets all over the world, and a growing concern of competitors and consumers altogether have made it happen now."
    In this new anti-trust era, the old focus on pricing power no longer applies, because several of the biggest tech companies have established trillion-dollar monopolies by charging consumers next to nothing. Tech giants are increasingly assuming powerful positions in banking, finance, advertising, retail, and other markets that force smaller businesses to rely on their platforms to reach customers.
    For years, Europe alone confronted the power of digital giants. Governments were alarmed that European companies were failing to match Silicon Valley’s innovations or to stop Google and Facebook from vacuuming up personal data and, with that, advertising revenue. Led by Margrethe Vestager, the European Union’s competition chief, countries have sought to police the market and encourage fair play.
    In China the crackdown has been driven at least partly by fear that the homegrown tech industry is becoming too powerful. The country has long championed Alibaba and Tencent, but their massive accumulation of data on the Chinese citizenry is a growing concern for Beijing.
    In the U.S., a new breed of anti-trust experts argues that consideration should be given to privacy, control over data, workers’ rights, and the overall impact on smaller companies. And the public in general have grown increasingly skeptical of social media companies. More than 60％ say the sector has a negative effect on the country, and almost half want more regulation for social media, according to a 2020 Pew Research Center study. [br] What do Americans generally think of social media companies according to the author?
选项 A、They are invading people’s privacy.
B、They are increasingly influential.
C、They are becoming untrustworthy.
D、They are growing out of control.
答案 C
解析 根据题干信息词Americans generally think of social media companies将答案线索定位到最后一段。最后一段介绍了美国的情况。第二句提及“总的来说，公众对社交媒体公司的疑心越来越重”。C项与原文相符，为正确答案。A项看似正确，但原文未明确提及，故排除。B项在文中有体现，但这不是美国民众对社交媒体公司的看法，故排除。最后一段第三句提及，有研究表明近一半的人希望对社交媒体进行更多监管，但未表明它们正逐渐失控，D项夸大事实，故排除。
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