Lone Candle
Champion of Truth
“Facebook is still a behemoth, and it has a long way to fall before that will cease to be true (if it ever is). I’m not suggesting we start writing eulogies yet. But the U.S. (and European Union) antitrust push against Facebook and other big tech companies assumes—and often explicitly argues—that Facebook’s power is permanent and its market share irreversible. Recent developments and ancient history show that’s very obviously not the case.”
https://www.vox.com/recode/22893117/microsoft-activision-antitrust-big-tech
“Note, however, the bill stipulates that it only covers firms that are over the $600 billion line “as of the date of enactment.” In other words, if a company has a market cap under $600 billion on the day the bill becomes law, then that company is permanently exempt—even if it later crosses the threshold.
Two companies that are currently under the $600 billion line and thus exempt from the bill are mega-retailers Target and Walmart. These companies are both worth hundreds of billions of dollars, and their e-commerce platforms are growing at a faster rate than Amazon’s. But under the Klobuchar/Cotton law, it wouldn’t matter if Target and Walmart overtake Amazon—they would be immune from this new antitrust action, as long as they are small enough on the day the bill is signed.
Readers may be interested to note that Target is headquartered in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Walmart is headquartered in Bentonville, Arkansas. Isn’t that interesting? It’s probably just a coincidence that the $600-billion-at-date-of-enactment provision would shield the two most important companies in Klobuchar and Cotton’s home states.”
“the US Federal Trade Commission and 48 US state attorneys general filed major lawsuits against Facebook that argue the social media giant is a monopoly whose anti-competitive practices harm Americans.
The two lawsuits, which follow more than a year of investigations, are the biggest antitrust challenge Facebook has faced. They both essentially call for Facebook to be broken up by forcing it to undo its acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp, which together have billions of users.
The lawsuits allege that such action may be necessary because Facebook has crushed its competitors and achieved dominance by buying potential rivals, and that this limits American consumers’ choices and reduces their access to privacy protections.
“They stifled innovation, and they degraded privacy protections for millions of Americans,” New York Attorney General Letitia James, who led the states’ lawsuit (which includes 46 states plus Washington, DC, and Guam), told reporters on Wednesday. “No company should have this much unchecked power over our personal information and our social interactions.”
Facebook did not immediately respond to a request for comment. But a blog post published by the company on Wednesday called the lawsuits “revisionist history.” The company emphasized that its acquisitions of WhatsApp and Instagram were approved by the FTC years ago, and said allowing a “do-over” would raise a concerning precedent that “no sale will ever be final.””