Discussion

• @colorofchange @colorofchange on x

  Big Tech widens the racial wealth gap by crowding Black-owned businesses out the market & not hiring Black employees, yet rely on our innovation to make the platforms popular. House lawmakers agree Congress must act according to the antitrust report: https://act.colorofchange.org…

• @matthewstoller Matt Stoller on x

  The threats Facebook and Google made to Australia after that country attempted to regulate them come up in the Cicilline Report on big tech. Apparently @davidcicilline is unhappy when big tech monopolies threaten sovereign nations.

• @sherman4949 Alex Sherman on x

  Maybe the most interesting recommendation from the antitrust subcommittee: “any acquisition by a dominant platform would be presumed anticompetitive unless the merging parties could show that the transaction was necessary for serving the public interest” https://www.cnbc.com/...

• @ddayen David Dayen on x

  OK, in my spare time, I read the House Antitrust Subcommittee report on Big Tech. It's not about Big Tech really, it's about Congress needing to reinstitute itself as the writer of the laws in this country https://prospect.org/...

• @shiraovide Shira Ovide on x

  In today's On Tech: The House antitrust report on Big Tech is thorough, unafraid to propose sweeping policy fixes and also...kinda overly broad. When you have an antitrust hammer, everything looks like antitrust nail? https://www.nytimes.com/...

• @stevestreza @stevestreza on x

  They were paying VERY close attention to what App Review was doing for the last few months. https://twitter.com/...

• @ow @ow on x

  @simevidas @stshank @dalmaer @rocallahan Ok, but right now we have the inverse problem as well: apple refusing to ship any web platform features because a) it pushes developers to make native apps and b) nobody can make a competing browser!!!!!!!!!!!

• @elkmovie Michael Love on x

  The App Store section alone runs 39 pages and is a fairly comprehensive accounting of pretty much everything anti-competitive that Apple does with it - they've clearly vacuumed up more-or-less everything publicly written on the subject in the last couple of years.

• @lutherlowe Luther Lowe on x

  “I got fired from my think tank after criticizing Google in 2017, so that section [on the way that these corporations finance think tanks and academics] rings true to me.” https://mattstoller.substack.com/ ... must-read analysis by @matthewstoller

• @snazzyq Quinn Nelson on x

  Just a reminder that Apple's stance on game streaming services in the iOS App Store is moronic.

• @matthewstoller Matt Stoller on x

  My analysis of the big tech report. I went into what's in it and why it matters, as well as why pervasive cynicism is actually cover for refusing to confront painful realities about how we used to think. https://mattstoller.substack.com/ ...

• @matthewstoller Matt Stoller on x

  It's virtually impossible to recognize how much attitudes about monopoly power have changed. The most telling example I've found of how badly we used to conceive of market power is when Occupy Wall Street honored Steve Jobs with a moment of silence. https://mattstoller.substack.c…

• @matthewstoller Matt Stoller on x

  “Congress can simply rewrite laws if the courts toss them out, since many rulings are based on statutory interpretation. This is a shot across the bow of the conservative Court; try to put thumbs on the scale for corporate power, and Congress will cut those thumbs off.” https://t…

• @pinboard @pinboard on x

  @ShiraOvide @matt_levine Congress is structurally beholden to Facebook because it has a duopoly in online political advertising. Even the most anti-Facebook members of congress spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on the platform. It's an interesting and unique form of regulato…

• @shiraovide Shira Ovide on x

  But look, rewind back a few years. I would not have believed that there would be (mostly) bipartisan agreement that four of America's most successful companies got that way by breaking the rules, and the status quo must change. This is a big deal. https://twitter.com/...

• @benedictevans Benedict Evans on x

  Reading the US anti-trust committee on ‘big tech’ antitrust. Lots that people in tech will argue about, but is there anyone at all that thinks startup creation has gone down in the last decade?! And this is based on one (1) study from... 2013. 🤔 https://twitter.com/...

• @halsinger Hal Singer on x

  Oh this is ugly and highlights how a dominant platform has a *unique* opportunity, unavailable to independent edge providers, to appropriate ideas from the edge https://www.washingtonpost.com/ ... https://twitter.com/...

• @stratechery @stratechery on x

  Anti-monopoly vs. Antitrust What matters about the Congressional report on tech and antitrust is that it exists, not the specific details. https://stratechery.com/...

• @lutherlowe Luther Lowe on x

  Quick glance at the House Antitrust Subcommittee report's substance. The number of pages dedicated to each company under “Dominant Online Platforms” Section: Facebook: 37 Apple: 43 Amazon: 68 Google: 71

• @matthewstoller Matt Stoller on x

  The remedies are pretty strong: (1) legislative breakups (2) strengthen merger and monopolization law (3) reform enforcers and (4) restore the ability of private citizens to sue monopolists. It's a great report. Wow. /Fin

• @stevesi Steven Sinofsky on x

  On the big theater/threat of breakup. https://www.cnbc.com/...

• @sally_hubbard Sally Hubbard on x

  The House #BigTech report shows merger reform is an absolute must. 500 acquisitions by tech giants and not a single antitrust challenge. Yet the Clayton Act prohibits mergers that may lessen competition or tend to create a monopoly! https://twitter.com/...

• @ourielohayon Ouriel Ohayon on x

  The problem is not whether has a monopoly but whether it is asymmetrical power and unfair advantages vs the developer it is supposed to serve. The answer is clearly yes. The question is whether the playing field is fair. The answer is clearly not enough. https://twitter.com/...

• @zhugeex Daniel Ahmad on x

  The Apple v Epic in app payment trial date is set for May 3rd, 2021. Apple and Epic both agreed to a bench trial rather than jury trial. Focus will be on Apple as a monopoly over app distribution, forcing 30% cut. https://twitter.com/...

• @matthewstoller Matt Stoller on x

  Steve Ballmer is willing to ‘bet money’ that big tech won't be broken up. He's wrong. The last section of my piece today explains why it's so hard to conceptualize the norm shift taking place within our democracy around corporate power. https://mattstoller.substack.com/ ... https…

• @tomwarren Tom Warren on x

  Apple is labeled a monopoly in the US tech antitrust report, and that it uses “privacy as a sword to exclude rivals and a shield to insulate itself from charges of anticompetitive conduct.” Ouch. https://twitter.com/...

• @jason_kint Jason Kint on x

  Bam, there it is. After more than a year of bipartisan investigations of Google, Facebook (plus Apple and Amazon), the U.S. House antitrust report just dropped. Time to go into deep-read mode. Tweets likely comin'. cc @dcnorg https://judiciary.house.gov/ ... https://twitter.com/.…

• @futterish Mike Futter on x

  This is massive for Epic. https://twitter.com/...