There may be tremendous social advantages provided by, e.g., Amazon: with the click of a button, a shopper can satisfy almost any want. Social wealth? The police reports suggest otherwise.Ībove all, though, we have to factor in the enormous social cost of leaving our entire public discourse in the hands of a censorious few. They are not old enough to navigate the complexities of online relationships, which often lead to misunderstandings and conflicts even among more mature users. As for Facebook: a couple of years ago, a number of child welfare groups complained to it thatĪ growing body of research demonstrates that excessive use of digital devices and social media is harmful to children and teens…. product that does almost exactly what DefinedCrowd Corp.’s product does. says that four years after investing in it, Amazon launched its own A.I. The artificial intelligence training company DefinedCrowd Corp. What is social wealth in our time? When Amazon’s venture capital fund makes an investment in a company, it gains valuable confidential information. But when Bork wrote The Antitrust Paradox, he was closer to the golden age of radio than to the internet age we live in now. As Harvard Law School Professor Donald Turner said, “Mergers are an important mechanism in the creation of social wealth”-in the provision of more than merely financial benefits to society.
Even complete monopolies should be lawful, he wrote, so long as they are gained by superior efficiencies-so long, that is, as they reflect a real value that can only be provided by aggregating all the business into one place. Bork explained that Section 2 of the 1890 Sherman Act outlaws only the process of monopolizing, not monopolies themselves. For years, Bork’s views on antitrust, put into general circulation by President Reagan’s antitrust chief William Baxter, have been accepted wisdom in antitrust circles. But the late Judge Robert Bork argued in The Antitrust Paradox (1978) that this is simply not true. It is widely believed that America’s antitrust laws were enacted in order to prevent companies from getting too big. But can the Democrats be sure it will work for them next time? It’s possible, even if not likely in a Biden Administration, that high tech could be in trouble.
Then-candidate Biden undoubtedly profited from censorship of the Hunter Biden story-perhaps enough to win the election. Still, even those who tend to benefit politically from Facebook’s actions may be thinking twice about entrusting them with so much power. But Pai is gone now, and the new head of the antitrust division at the Justice Department is likely to be either a Silicon Valley superstar attorney, or, if that won’t fly, an attorney who is at least not hostile to the tech magnates that made President Joe Biden’s victory possible. “But they do not have a First Amendment right to a special immunity denied to other media outlets.” That was big.
#THE TYRANNY OF BIG TECH FREE#
This high-profile, high-tech sin prompted a major statement from then-Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Ajit Pai: “Social media companies have a First Amendment right to free speech,” he said. They want whatever relief the antitrust statutes can provide-and if they can’t provide any, then they want legislation that can.ĭuring the presidential campaign, Facebook refused to allow dissemination of information purportedly gleaned from Hunter Biden’s laptop. And those businesses’ Washington representatives include, obviously, both Republicans and Democrats. But the tech mega-companies are equal-opportunity predators: they treat all sorts of ordinary, non-media-oriented businesses abysmally. Political watchers may have been shocked to find bipartisanship going on in Washington. The ACAL’s majority report recommended, inter alia, “structural separations and prohibition of certain dominant platforms, from operating in adjacent lines of business.” Four Republican members wrote a response to the majority (“The Third Way”), largely agreeing with the report’s findings but dissenting from some of its recommended legislative solutions. The suit followed a report on tech monopolies, almost two years in the making, from the House Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Antitrust, Commercial, and Administrative Law (ACAL). But whether the DOJ wins or loses, the publicity for Google and its Big Tech buddies should be awful-assuming there is any publicity. Last October, the Department of Justice brought a long-awaited antitrust suit against Google. It has become impossible to avoid taking a serious look at reforming them. Technicalities aside, however, complaints have been pouring in about the practices of tech mega-companies, especially the big four: Amazon, Google, Facebook, and Twitter. Tech monopolies have been under scrutiny for years-though some might object that describing them as “monopolies” is already stealing a base.
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