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House lawmakers release anti-monopoly agenda for “a stronger online economy”

cicilline.house.gov

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Re: House lawmakers release anti-monopoly agenda for “a stronger online economy”

#181

Post by JPKab »

gfodor wrote: post #2

I fundamentally distrust these people (on both sides) which will make it hard to not presume there are perverse incentives in these bills, but I’m open to it. My sense is that antitrust is as wrong a model for correcting this as the prior regime was that led to the creation of antitrust laws.

I think it's important to point out here that neither side really understands tech but one side was viciously against any form of antitrust with these companies until the absolutely foolish decision by these companies to start targeting that one side for censorship. Their employees demanded it as did the Democratic party leadership. And they did their thing and lost the only friends they had on this front. Any GOP politician who tries to block this will have no leg to stand on within their own party. Something that would have been unthinkable 2 years ago is now a popular action because the base hates these companies so much now. They managed to turn Alabama Republicans into people who hate large corporations as much as your typical Berkeley protester. Based on this I'm assuming that Mark Zuckerberg and Jack Dorsey are surrounded by sycophantic idiots.

Re: House lawmakers release anti-monopoly agenda for “a stronger online economy”

#182

Post by socialist_coder »

asdfasgasdgasdg wrote: post #36
shakezula wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Historically, breaking up monopolies has been very good for the end consumer. Bell Labs and Standard Oil both ended up being good things. Instead of breaking them up though, we should simply be more stringent with anti trust hearings and merger approvals. There have been a few mergers recently that absolutely shouldn’t have been approved.

In both of those cases, consumers were being overcharged for good and services in a variety of concrete economic ways. It's not analogous to the current situation, I don't think. It's not like a broken up Google or Facebook would cease showing ads or show fewer ads. If anything, they'd show more, as we can see from all the random clickbait news sites that are more ad than material. It seems possible that a broken up…

> It's not like a broken up Google or Facebook would cease showing ads or show fewer ads.

If there was a real competitor to Google, I would imagine they would try showing less ads.

If there was a real competitor to Facebook, who knows what changes they would make to the newsfeed.

I would hope we could get some competitors that make things better for the end user, worse for the ad buyer, but can still be profitable.

Re: House lawmakers release anti-monopoly agenda for “a stronger online economy”

#183

Post by refulgentis »

FpUser wrote: post #175
mkolodny wrote: post #154

The "Platform Competition and Opportunity Act" looks like it would ban big tech companies from buying almost any other companies: "It shall be unlawful for a covered platform operator to acquire directly or indirectly... the whole or any part of the stock or other share capital of another person engaged in commerce or in any activity or affecting commerce." [0] [0] https://cicilline.house.gov/sites/cicilline.house.go…

You conveniently omitted the Exclusion class that makes the excerpt posted above quite reasonable. The only thing which is not completely clear to me is whether the items listed in the Exclusion class are combined using OR or AND. In any way every once in a while the US surprises me in a very good way. Congrats if it passes.

I can't find what you're referring to in the source document.

I believe you it's there, but I'm not sure your accusation + lack of content were a net contribution to the discussion

Re: House lawmakers release anti-monopoly agenda for “a stronger online economy”

#184

Post by webmaven »

missedthecue wrote: post #170
ethbr0 wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Free service -> non-free infrastructure / development -> corporate revenue -> who's really paying In this case, it's advertisers. Which is why all the antitrust suits are brought "for" the ad industry.

But aren't the ad prices derived by live auction? It's not as if Facebook is pricing above market equilibrium to extract monopoly rents.

> But aren't the ad prices derived by live auction? It's not as if Facebook is pricing above market equilibrium to extract monopoly rents.

There is a peculiar dynamic as the market centralizes toward fewer marketplaces (for example two-sided ones like AdWords) such that buyers have to go there to find sellers and vice-versa, that results in sellers getting stuck in a race to the bottom, while buyers are stuck in a race to the top. It's like the dark mirror of the network effect. The market maker gets to siphon off the growing gap as fees of various sorts. Voila, monopoly rents.

FB isn't a two sided marketplace, but buyers are definitely stuck bidding against each other which causes the market equilibrium to rise. And even if you broaden the definition of the market fairly generously such that FB doesn't have a monopoly per-se, you've still got an oligopoly at best.

Re: House lawmakers release anti-monopoly agenda for “a stronger online economy”

#185

Post by bww »

zer00eyz wrote: post #121

We are talking about the big tech companies... Name one that is an ACTUAL monopoly? Facebook? Apple? Google? Amazon? Vertical integration is NOT monopoly, and thats what many of them are doing. I see a lot of arguments about these companies that are tantamount to "I didn't know how the world worked till I saw them do it and now I'm unhappy". After starting to dig a bit further than this article into what some of thes…

It doesn’t really matter whether any of these companies are monopolies in the Sherman Act sense. That act was passed about 130 years ago and could never have possibly envisioned the challenges presented by tech companies today.

What does matter is that these companies are very much engaged in the behaviors these bills would regulate. The point of the legislature is not to sit around and observe why a century-old law doesn’t technically apply to a modern problem, it’s to make a new law that does apply.

I don’t have an opinion on whether these bills are a good idea or not (although I definitely think big tech need some reining in). But whether or not these companies are technically monopolies has nothing to do with it beyond a bit of political rhetoric.

Re: House lawmakers release anti-monopoly agenda for “a stronger online economy”

#186

Post by wildrhythms »

bawolff wrote: post #147

Looking at the first page of one ( https://cicilline.house.gov/sites/cicilline.house.gov/files/... ), it will make it illegal to: "restrict or impede businesses users from communicating information or providing hyperlinks on the covered platform to covered platform users to facilitate business transactions;" Does this make it illegal to ban spammers? (I havent actually read these. They are long).

This is covered under the proceeding affirmative defense and the phrase 'legitimate activity'. I imagine it's pretty easy to make the case that spammers are not engaging in legitimate activity, but that's up for interpretation I guess

---

Subsection (a) and (b) shall not apply if the defendant establishes by clear and convincing evidence that the conduct described in subsections (a) or (b) would not result in harm to the competitive process by restricting or impeding legitimate activity by business users.

Re: House lawmakers release anti-monopoly agenda for “a stronger online economy”

#187

Post by wildrhythms »

plandis wrote: post #65

Interestingly enough the main sponsor for one of the bills (Jayapal) represents pretty much all the tech workers that work at Amazon in Seattle. Wonder how they will feel knowing their representative is proposing legislation will likely hurt their financial well-being. Edit: Why the downvotes? I think it’s an interesting dynamic between constituents and their representative.

The workers don't own the company.

Re: House lawmakers release anti-monopoly agenda for “a stronger online economy”

#188

Post by FpUser »

refulgentis wrote: post #183
FpUser wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You conveniently omitted the Exclusion class that makes the excerpt posted above quite reasonable. The only thing which is not completely clear to me is whether the items listed in the Exclusion class are combined using OR or AND. In any way every once in a while the US surprises me in a very good way. Congrats if it passes.

I can't find what you're referring to in the source document. I believe you it's there, but I'm not sure your accusation + lack of content were a net contribution to the discussion

>"I believe you it's there.."

Yes it is there in the same section as the topic mentioned. It has too much of the text IMHO to include in its entirety. Just in case you try again here is the pattern to search for: "(A) compete with the covered platform".

>"but I'm not sure your accusation"

The poster "accuses" proposal based on a single item taken out of context from the relevant section. Meanwhile the same section includes said Exclusion clause.

>"net contribution to the discussion"

The net contribution is that the distortion by omission of the bill's section is being prevented.

Re: House lawmakers release anti-monopoly agenda for “a stronger online economy”

#189

Post by webmaven »

dodobirdlord wrote: post #109
tacotacotaco wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ... but (with my consumer hat on), I don't really care about ad buyers that much. Ad buyers are the consumers. You are the product.

No, ad buyers are businesses. As much as business interests have been trying to redefine negative impact on consumers as including out-competing rival companies, that’s not what it means.

> No, ad buyers are businesses. As much as business interests have been trying to redefine negative impact on consumers as including out-competing rival companies, that’s not what it means.

That's a bit of a non sequitur.

Ad-buying businesses aren't, generally, rivals to the ad-selling platform. It isn't necessarily a bad model to treat them as consumers, or at least as proxies for actual consumers. The cost of monopoly rents being passed on to consumers isn't a particularly controversial proposition.

Re: House lawmakers release anti-monopoly agenda for “a stronger online economy”

#190

Post by derefr »

mkolodny wrote: post #154

The "Platform Competition and Opportunity Act" looks like it would ban big tech companies from buying almost any other companies: "It shall be unlawful for a covered platform operator to acquire directly or indirectly... the whole or any part of the stock or other share capital of another person engaged in commerce or in any activity or affecting commerce." [0] [0] https://cicilline.house.gov/sites/cicilline.house.go…

Or it would force the bigcorps to divest their social platforms and run them at arm’s length, maybe just as shareholders/investors.
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