Overview of House lawmakers' recent antitrust-focused bills, which target consumer tech giants, vary in radicalness, and at times conflict with each other
From the Wall Street Journal: — These bills are the ultimate outcome of the House Subcommittee on Antitrust's investigation …
Stratechery Ben Thompson
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Discussion
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@benedictevans
Benedict Evans
on x
The funniest thing about this wave of antitrust bills is that it's written to catch, block and shut down Microsoft, even though no-one in tech has been scared of Microsoft killing them for 10 or 15 years. Be careful what you lobby for...
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@benedictevans
Benedict Evans
on x
Microsoft went to DC and asked for regulation, and now it has a bill that says Office, Windows and Azure should be broken into separate companies 🤣
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@carnage4life
Dare Obasanjo
on x
Microsoft catching a stray bullet after going around the world lobbying governments to regulate big tech is classic. Pending U.S. bills would ban acquisitions or competing with anyone who builds on its platforms (Office, Windows, Azure, etc). Oops. 🤦🏾♂ ️ https://twitter.com/...
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@deaneckles
Dean Eckles
on x
A critical review of the bills targeting “Big Tech” from @benedictevans Data portability is a big, valuable idea — but not an easy one and the Access Act doesn't seem to do any of the hard work here. https://www.ben-evans.com/...
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@leah_nylen
@leah_nylen
on x
@JusticeATR Civil fines for knowing violations of the antitrust laws of up to 15% of a company's annual revenues for each year in which the violation occurred. That's in line with EU fines, which can be big $ (see Google's $10B or so)
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@benedictevans
Benedict Evans
on x
And joking apart, that shows what bad practice it is to write laws based on a crude quantitative definition of ‘big tech’ without taking the time and doing the work.
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@stevesi
Steven Sinofsky
on x
@benedictevans Something something generals fighting the last war...
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@carnage4life
Dare Obasanjo
on x
Lots of Twitter discussion and now legislation driven off of that discussion has very simplistic remedies to complex problems when it comes to big tech. It's funny since no one argues breaking up Toyota fixes drunk driving or emissions yet in tech they do https://www.ben-evans.co…
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@leah_nylen
@leah_nylen
on x
No federal contracts to companies that have violated the antitrust laws in the last 5 years. (Sorry many pharma companies and Apple)
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@freepress
Free Press
on x
Zuckerberg has spent years telling anyone who would listen — from policymakers to The Washington Post — that Facebook wants to be regulated. It's time for action. Tell Mark to publicly endorse the Algorithmic Justice and Online Platform Transparency Act: https://act.freepress.net…
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@leah_nylen
@leah_nylen
on x
There's been a lot of antitrust news today. Sen. Mike Lee and Chuck Grassley also dropped their own antitrust overhaul. Here's the one-pager: https://www.lee.senate.gov/...
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@carnage4life
Dare Obasanjo
on x
@stevesi @benedictevans None of these laws will stop Stripe which is destined to be as big and powerful as any of the direct > $600B market cap tech companies. Generals fighting the last war indeed.