Google and Facebook may continue predatory behavior for years as antitrust cases play out, which can be deterred by filing criminal charges against their execs
Matt Stoller / BIG : Tweets: @halsinger , @billyez2 , @benedictevans , @gretchenspeters , @iwelsh , @jason_kint , @moonalice , @matthewstoller , @matthewstoller , @matthewstoller , @ektrit , and @jason_kint Tweets: Hal Singer / @halsinger : Great point by @matthewstoller about antitrust. We can tolerate (barely) the slow-motion progress when harms are overcharges (or underpayments), which can be compensated with interest. But when the harm is an innovation loss, there's no getting it back. https://mattstoller.substack.com/ ... https://twitter.com/... Billy Easley II / @billyez2 : Fellow criminal justice policy wonks - what do you think about making it easier to establish personal criminal liability against CEO's and white collar workers? Or pushing agencies to do? Not just talking about Facebook or Google btw https://twitter.com/... Benedict Evans / @benedictevans : I also read a column by a popular anti-trust polemicist who thinks Sundar Pichai should go to prison for decisions made at Google before he was hired there. Gretchen Peters / @gretchenspeters : @matthewstoller @jenhollidayesq @matthewstoller another option is going after tech execs like #Zuch, #Pinchai for amplifying and accelerating the opioid crisis (& other crime). They both have blood on their hands due to the way their firms facilitate and profit of fake pharmacies selling illegal fake opioids. Ian Welsh / @iwelsh : This goes very widely for all sorts of elite malfeasance. And especially at corporate execs, who routinely kill and impoverish people, for money, in clear crimes. (Liars loans and robosigning are only two crimes for which execs should have gone to jail or life for.) https://twitter.com/... Jason Kint / @jason_kint : Where Matt Stoller makes persuasive arguments for why attorney general needs to press charges against Facebook and Google executives for the section one violation in the complaint against Google this week for cartel behaviors damaging publishers/industry. Well worth the read. https://twitter.com/... Roger McNamee / @moonalice : Terrific profile of the amazing @DinaSrinivasan, whose theories on privacy invasions as harm underlie the DOJ antitrust case against Google and FB. Thank you, @daiwaka https://www.nytimes.com/... Matt Stoller / @matthewstoller : And in fact, Thurman Arnold, who is widely considered to be the greatest antitrust enforcer in American history, used criminal indictments in the 1930s as a core part of his strategy to end elite lawlessness. https://mattstoller.substack.com/ ... Matt Stoller / @matthewstoller : The DOJ antitrust division already has a corporate leniency program for those who turn in fellow cartel members. Criminal indictments can in fact stop crime. https://mattstoller.substack.com/ ... Matt Stoller / @matthewstoller : Facebook and Google think they have employee trouble, but if enforcers threatened to bring criminal charges against those responsible for its various predatory schemes, oh man. Workers would flip on those at the top who gave the orders. https://mattstoller.substack.com/ ... Kris / @ektrit : Subtitle by @matthewstoller “The Problem of Elite Lawlessness” Obama and Trump, two sides of the same coin. Crime Shouldn't Pay: Why Big Tech Executives Should Face Jail by @matthewstoller https://mattstoller.substack.com/ ... Jason Kint / @jason_kint : for a company who regularly dismisses the importance of its display advertising biz, it sure was willing to break a lot of antitrust laws... like the state AGs vs Facebook, I'm also thrilled here, this is the exact case I wanted against Google. As promised, Texas had the experts.
Context & Ripple Effects
This piece lands in the middle of a two-front legal campaign: the DOJ's suit against Google — which Google dismissed as deeply flawed, arguing people use it by choice rather than force — and the FTC and state AG complaints whose emails portray Zuckerberg as having vowed to "crush" competitors (dramatic language that cuts both ways in court). Matt Stoller's argument is that civil remedies are structurally too slow against this kind of conduct.
The framing draws on a longer arc of documented exclusionary behavior at Google, Facebook, and Amazon stretching back years, including Foundem's long-running case against Google that challenged the idea the internet economy self-corrects. Stoller's point: when the harm is lost innovation rather than an overcharge, money-plus-interest compensation arrives after the damage is unrecoverable.
First-order effects
- Google and Facebook can keep operating as-is through multi-year litigation — the DOJ's own case timeline means any behavioral change is voluntary unless courts or Congress intervene sooner.
- Named executives currently face only corporate-level exposure; the call for criminal charges targets their personal incentives, the one lever that operates on decision-makers directly.
Second-order effects
- A criminal-referral pathway would change the calculus inside both companies' legal and product reviews: conduct that reads as aggressive-but-civilly-defensible becomes personally risky for the managers who sign off on it.
- The DOJ already runs a corporate leniency program rewarding firms that turn in cartel members — extending an individual-liability logic to platform monopolies would pressure other enforcers (FTC, state AGs) to escalate from consent-decree-style remedies.
Third-order effects
- If personal criminal liability became a credible antitrust tool, enforcement would shift from punishing companies after the fact to deterring executives before conduct occurs — restructuring how large platforms vet acquisitions and exclusionary tactics.
- The alternative trajectory is the current one: civil cases measured in years against harms measured in foregone innovation, normalizing a regime where incumbents outlast their prosecutors.
The trend: Antitrust enforcement is splitting between slow-moving civil suits against corporations and a rising political push to attach personal consequences to executive conduct.