At a Senate oversight hearing last month, antitrust subcommittee Chairman Mike Lee, R-Utah, reacted to reports of disagreements between the Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Justice over who would investigate Facebook for antitrust violations. The whole exchange, however, revealed a deep misunderstanding of American’s antimonopoly tradition and political philosophy generally. Read the latest piece from The Corner newsletter.
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In Washingtonian magazine, reporter Luke Mullins exposes Big Tech’s number one enemy: Open Markets Institute. As Mullins details, founder Barry Lynn and his team are shifting the debate over Big Tech, presenting potential antitrust solutions to challenge Silicon Valley’s monopoly power. The anti-trust movement has reached critical mass in Washington, writes Mullins. Barry Lynn and his allies helped put it there.
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We can do better than fine companies that break the law, writes Vox's Emily Stewart. She speaks to Open Markets Director of Enforcement Strategy Sally Hubbard about the recent developments with Facebook. “As long as it is profitable to break the law, corporations, which are profit-maximizing entities by design, will continue to break the law,” says Hubbard. “You actually need to go harder on the big guys, and it’s not a question of lack of authority, it’s a lack of political will.”
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Open Markets Senior Fellow Matt Stoller published a piece on The Guardian on the heels of news that U.S. state attorneys general are launching a bipartisan investigation into Facebook and Google. “These corporations have become too powerful to be contained by democratic societies,” he writes. “We must work through our government to break them up and regulate our information commons, or they will end up becoming our government and choosing what we see and know about the world around us.”
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“We applaud the 50 attorneys general for taking this unprecedented stand against Big Tech by uniting to investigate Google’s destruction of competition in search and advertising,” said Open Markets Director of Enforcement Strategy in a statement. “Today’s announcement marks the start of a new era.”
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Salon’s Andrew Germanos reports on the multistate probe targetings Facebook’s antitrust violations. She sites a statement issued by Open Markets Deputy Director Sarah Miller.
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"This morning's announcement is a major step forward in the broadening effort on the part of our democratic institutions to address Facebook's monopoly power," said Open Markets Deputy Director Sarah Miller in a statement today.
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POLITICO's Nancy Scola and Margaret Harding McGill report that U.S. news companies are using a playbook from Europe to challenge the online platforms they see as an existential threat. They speak to Open Markets Director of Enforcement Strategy Sally Hubbard who says "I think the bargaining power between any individual publisher and a tech platform is just too vast.”
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"When a founding father of the information industry calls for breaking the monopoly power of big tech it means the time has come for the government to act," says Open Markets Executive Director Barry Lynn in a statement.
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Steve Lohr of The New York Times offers four prominent ideas as to how big tech should be reined in from experts, including Open Markets Director Barry Lynn.
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Bloomberg's Sarah Frier writes a critical report about the Federal Trade Commission's $5 billion settlement with Facebook. She reports that the FTC’s antitrust investigation looks a lot less imposing given its privacy settlement with the company and speaks with Open Markets Senior Fellow Matt Stoller. “For any anticompetitive behavior they want to get away with, they’re going to say, ‘The FTC made us,’ ” Stoller told her. “That’s what they bought for $5 billion.”
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The Verge reports on the FBI's plans to build a dragnet on Facebook demonstrating the incoherence of the government's approach to Facebook. "On one hand, it fines Facebook $5 billion for violating users’ privacy; on the other, it outlines a plan to potentially store all Americans’ public posts in a database for monitoring purposes." The Verge also reviews other Facebook news and cites Open Markets Senior Fellow Matt Stoller in regards to Facebook's ad network crashes: "How much of a monopoly do you have to be to literally not care if your cash register breaks? Oh I can’t take your money nvm I’ll get it later.”
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POLITICO's Steve Overly writes about Silicon Valley's antitrust troubles in Washington and the confluence of probes America's biggest tech companies are facing. He reports that enforcers "have met with Barry Lynn, executive director of the Open Markets Institute." He also interviews Lynn who argues that strong antitrust action can alter the digital business models that have given rise to issues like disinformation.
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Enforcers and policymakers should pay particular attention to FTC Commissioner Rohit Chopra’s powerful dissenting statement. Chopra condemned the Facebook settlement, writing, “This framework does not protect the public — it protects Facebook” and “ratifies Facebook’s governance structure instead of changing it.”
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Reporters Elizabeth Dwoskin and Tony Romm report on former Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes' campaign to break up Facebook. Hughes has "become one of the company’s biggest problems," they report. They also wrote that lawmakers and regulators have also held meetings with other antitrust experts, according to those leaders, such as Barry Lynn from the Open Markets Institute.
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The Open Markets Institute denounces the Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) official $5 billion settlement with Facebook.
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