How big tech platforms like Google, Facebook, and Amazon use exclusionary conduct to acquire and maintain monopoly power and thus possibly violate antitrust law
Sally Hubbard / CNN : Tweets: @romoraleselcoro , @garrytan , @rooseveltinst , and @jason_kint Tweets: Rodrigo Morales Elcoro / @romoraleselcoro : Perspectives: The case for why Big Tech is violating antitrust laws “If you think an antitrust law passed over a century ago couldn't possibly address the problems of the digital era, you're wrong. ” @CNNI @Sally_Hubbard http://edition.cnn.com/... Garry Buidl Tan / @garrytan : The mega tech giants prioritize their own goods and services over those of competitors that depend on their platforms. A startup can create a superior product and still get crushed because Big Tech is controlling the game and playing it, too. http://www.cnn.com/... Roosevelt Institute / @rooseveltinst : “Competition maximizes consumer choice, innovation and quality, and combats the concentration of economic and political power.” @Sally_Hubbard explains how monopoly power in big tech is violating #antitrust law for @CNNBusiness. http://www.cnn.com/... Jason Kint / @jason_kint : “Big Tech is violating the Sherman Act of 1890.” from former Asst AG for NY. cc @brianstelter http://twitter.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
This piece lands mid-arc in the antitrust debate that had been building since early 2018, when tech's unprecedented power first prompted calls for rethinking decades-old US antitrust law, and when Foundem's case against Google dismantled the claim that internet markets self-correct without enforcement. Sally Hubbard's argument is the synthesis of those threads: the conduct platforms exhibit toward dependent competitors isn't new behavior needing new law, but classic exclusionary conduct the Sherman Act already covers.
What makes the argument consequential rather than academic is what followed it — the formal cases against Google, Amazon, Apple, and Facebook that legal analysts assessed as far from a slam dunk, and Google's own counter-framing that users choose it freely rather than being forced onto its services.
First-order effects
- Startups building on top of Google, Facebook, and Amazon platforms face the immediate risk Hubbard describes: a superior product can still be buried when the gatekeeper prioritizes its own goods and services over those of rivals that depend on access.
Second-order effects
- Google's public defense — that people use it because they choose to, not because they're forced to — shows the platforms' forced response is a consumer-choice narrative aimed directly at the exclusionary-conduct theory, while the House hearing revealed Democrats and Republicans splitting along partisan lines over which harms even matter.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, enforcement alone may not change platform behavior — commentators argue predatory conduct can persist for years as cases play out unless executives face personal criminal exposure, raising the stakes from corporate fines to individual liability under a century-old statute.
The trend: Antitrust enforcement against Big Tech is converging on the argument that existing law like the Sherman Act already reaches platform self-preferencing, with the battleground shifting from whether the law applies to how quickly it deters conduct.