{"id":31082,"date":"2020-08-05T19:02:00","date_gmt":"2020-08-05T19:02:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mathewingram.blog\/?p=31082"},"modified":"2020-08-05T19:02:00","modified_gmt":"2020-08-05T19:02:00","slug":"so-the-tech-titans-appeared-before-congress-now-what","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/2020\/08\/05\/so-the-tech-titans-appeared-before-congress-now-what\/","title":{"rendered":"So the tech titans appeared before Congress\u2014now what?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Note<\/em><\/strong>: This was <\/em>originally written for<\/em><\/a> the daily newsletter published by the Columbia Journalism Review, where I am the chief digital writer <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Last week, the chief executives of the four major tech platforms\u2014Google, Amazon, Apple, and Facebook\u2014appeared before Congress<\/a> (virtually, at least) as part of a year-long investigation into whether antitrust regulators need to take action against any or all of them for anti-competitive behavior. Was the hearing mostly a sideshow<\/a>, or was it a sign that Congress is planning significant changes to the rules that apply to these digital behemoths? And if regulations are going to change, or antitrust action is going to proceed against some or all of them, what would\u2014or should\u2014that look like? How can regulators apply laws that were designed a century ago for railroads<\/a> and oil companies to digital networks whose products are ephemeral and cost nothing? In an attempt to answer some of these questions, we’ve been interviewing a number of journalists, academics, and other experts on antitrust, politics, and technology using CJR’s Galley discussion platform<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our first interview was with Zephyr Teachout<\/a>, an associate professor of law at Fordham University, a former Democratic candidate for governor of New York, and the former national director of the Sunlight Foundation. She said going into the hearing she felt “like a teenager on Christmas, ready to be pleased and ready to be horribly disappointed,” but came away thinking that the members of the committee posed some tough questions to the four tech titans, and even managed to draw out some “revelations,” as she put it<\/a>\u2014such as an admission from Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s chief executive, that sellers who use Amazon’s shipping services are more likely to get access to the coveted “buy box” at the top of the page with recommended purchases. Teachout also said that <\/a>the way Apple treats app developers renewed her commitment to antitrust regulation: “The 30% commission is just on its face highway robbery,” she said, adding that it “proves how monopoly is theft.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

David Dayen, the executive editor of The American Prospect<\/em> and author of a new book entitled “Monopolized: Life in the Age of Corporate Power,” said that he felt the hearing<\/a> exposed a number of obvious antitrust violations, and that the Federal Trade Commission and Department of Justice could have taken action to prevent some of this conduct but chose not to. Why? A lack of political will, he said. “Many of the top officials at FTC and DoJ Antitrust have ties to corporate law firms and have worked for the large companies they are now supposed to regulate,” Dayen said. “It’s kind of staggering how many conflicts there are.” Sandeep Vaheesan, legal director at the Open Markets Institute, said the hearing was an important reassertion of Congress’s power<\/a> to regulate markets. The legislative body “has been silent for so long on these questions,” he said. “It felt like a throwback to an earlier time when Congress took its oversight function and matters of market governance seriously.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Not everyone agreed that the hearing was a success, or that it even proved regulation is necessary. Scott Rosenberg, technology editor at Axios, said the members of the committee showed the four tech giants competing, but didn’t come close to proving that<\/a> any of them have a monopoly, which is what’s required to show something breaches antitrust law. “A lot of the conduct that the members of Congress were appalled at was conduct that’s neither surprising nor illegal\u2014unless you’ve got a monopoly,” Rosenberg said<\/a>. “Showing evidence of rough elbows or price-gouging or underselling isn’t the point. Proving that a company has a monopoly is the point, and the committee just didn’t tackle that.” Dipayan Ghosh, who runs the Digital Platforms & Democracy Project at Harvard and is a former advisor to Facebook and the Obama administration, argued that there is plenty of evidence<\/a> these companies have monopolies “and that they are perpetuating harms in price to society, quality of service rendered to society, and the pace of market innovation.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So what happens now? Matt Stoller, research director at the American Economic Liberties Project, said that breaking up Facebook or forcing it<\/a> to sell off Instagram or WhatsApp is a real possibility. An acquisition is illegal if the effect of this combination “may be substantially to lessen competition, or to tend to create a monopoly,” he said, and such mergers can be reversed. Vaheesan, meanwhile, said that while breaking up any or all of the tech titans is a possibility, Congress should also look at<\/a> implementing “conduct remedies,” including forcing the platforms to allow interoperability with other services. This could weaken the advantages that Facebook and others enjoy from network effects, he said, and allow for rival social media platforms to grow. And the FTC could also “use its consumer protection powers to restrict targeted advertising and data collection,” he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here’s more on tech and antitrust:<\/p>\n\n\n\n