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"Breaking up big tech" or "throwing monkey wrenches into their gears" is related enough that it might be worth paying attention to the OP's overall point - we'r

"Breaking up big tech" or "throwing monkey wrenches into their gears" is related enough that it might be worth paying attention to the OP's overall point - we're applying these rules only to American companies which will automatically a) help Chinese companies like Tik Tok compete against Facebook and Snap, and b) disincentivize them from opening US offices. Why isn't there a 6th bill saying something like: "because we cannot control Chinese companies directly, we'll control them indirectly through American app stores or what have you." I know it's a pipe dream, but we better dream quickly or those companies will get so big that we'll be all using a Chinese OS soon enough and then that last ability to control any aspect of their business model will be gone. EDIT: someone posted that these bills will equally affect American and international companies. I don't see how that's possible. Eg: > The “Platform Competition and Opportunity Act” prohibits acquisitions of competitive threats by dominant platforms Who is going to prevent ByteDance from acquiring every competitive Chinese company? Once they start doing that and we see some massive consolidation in China, ByteDance will go from being the most profitable private company worth $140B to being close to Facebook's $1T market cap. This is not some fiction scenario, it's literally how American companies got big as well. While I wish the American consolidation never happened, I am not sure if the right solution is to just prevent it domestically.

rkk3 5y ago
> Who is going to prevent ByteDance from acquiring every competitive Chinese company China's social platform ecosystem probably has more diversity than the US. This hypothetical doesn't work great since Tencent(WeChat) is it-least twice the size of ByteDance... I do agree with the premise that regulation on American companies does have an effect on how competitive they are globally.
nl 5y ago
> Who is going to prevent ByteDance from acquiring every competitive Chinese company? The US can make laws about how companies that operate in other markets can behave. The US can enforce those rules on any subsidiaries that operate in US markets. This isn't even uncommon - we see it in (eg) mining all the time, where corporate regulators stop overseas takeovers from occurring.
- aerosmile 5y ago
  This is new to me, so let's confirm just to be sure: US regulators have stopped non-US companies from acquiring other non-US companies? How would that even be regulated, purely logistically? A non-US company doesn't have to report to the US regulators any part of its non-US business.
  - nl 5y ago
    If a business does business in the US then the US can (and does) make laws demanding reporting of corporate ownership. This is usually done as part of tax law. See for example https://www.internationallawoffice.com/Newsletters/Private-Client-Offshore-Services/USA/Kozusko-Harris-Duncan/Reporting-beneficial-owners-of-certain-US-companies-details-of-new-Corporate-Transparency-Act https://www.internationallawoffice.com/Newsletters/Private-C... A specific example of this kind of action: In 2016 the Obama administration block the Dutch Phillips company from selling (Dutch) Lumiled to Chinese investment companies. More recently there was the (disastrously administed) attempt to force US ownership of TikTok as well as a less well known attempt to force the sale of Grindr. https://web.archive.org/web/20170227090607/https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/05/technology/concern-grows-in-us-over-chinas-drive-to-make-chips.html https://web.archive.org/web/20170227090607/https://www.nytim...
    - aerosmile 5y ago
      This is really informative and helpful, thank you for taking the time to share! Interesting that they use the tax law as the hook. It certainly makes me feel a lot better about our chances of staying competitive.
mikeiz404 5y ago
Fair point. I wasn't sure how closely the original commenter had read the article so I figured some clarification would be helpful. With respect to "breaking up big tech" and it being harmful to US companies on a global stage, my guess is that over a long enough time period monopolistic companies tend stop being innovative since their motivations in how to derive profit shift. I believe that will end up being harmful for the societies and countries they exist in. Countries, societies, and industries which can stay competitive I think would benefit in the long run so long as they are not consumed by that global monopoly. In the short run it could be pretty harmful. Just an opinion I'm not too strongly tied to at the moment. It would be interesting to see an economic study or something.

rkk3 5y ago

> Who is going to prevent ByteDance from acquiring every competitive Chinese company China's social platform ecosystem probably has more diversity than the US. This hypothetical doesn't work great since Tencent(WeChat) is it-least twice the size of ByteDance... I do agree with the premise that regulation on American companies does have an effect on how competitive they are globally.

nl 5y ago

> Who is going to prevent ByteDance from acquiring every competitive Chinese company? The US can make laws about how companies that operate in other markets can behave. The US can enforce those rules on any subsidiaries that operate in US markets. This isn't even uncommon - we see it in (eg) mining all the time, where corporate regulators stop overseas takeovers from occurring.

aerosmile 5y ago
This is new to me, so let's confirm just to be sure: US regulators have stopped non-US companies from acquiring other non-US companies? How would that even be regulated, purely logistically? A non-US company doesn't have to report to the US regulators any part of its non-US business.
- nl 5y ago
  If a business does business in the US then the US can (and does) make laws demanding reporting of corporate ownership. This is usually done as part of tax law. See for example https://www.internationallawoffice.com/Newsletters/Private-Client-Offshore-Services/USA/Kozusko-Harris-Duncan/Reporting-beneficial-owners-of-certain-US-companies-details-of-new-Corporate-Transparency-Act https://www.internationallawoffice.com/Newsletters/Private-C... A specific example of this kind of action: In 2016 the Obama administration block the Dutch Phillips company from selling (Dutch) Lumiled to Chinese investment companies. More recently there was the (disastrously administed) attempt to force US ownership of TikTok as well as a less well known attempt to force the sale of Grindr. https://web.archive.org/web/20170227090607/https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/05/technology/concern-grows-in-us-over-chinas-drive-to-make-chips.html https://web.archive.org/web/20170227090607/https://www.nytim...
  - aerosmile 5y ago
    This is really informative and helpful, thank you for taking the time to share! Interesting that they use the tax law as the hook. It certainly makes me feel a lot better about our chances of staying competitive.

mikeiz404 5y ago

Fair point. I wasn't sure how closely the original commenter had read the article so I figured some clarification would be helpful. With respect to "breaking up big tech" and it being harmful to US companies on a global stage, my guess is that over a long enough time period monopolistic companies tend stop being innovative since their motivations in how to derive profit shift. I believe that will end up being harmful for the societies and countries they exist in. Countries, societies, and industries which can stay competitive I think would benefit in the long run so long as they are not consumed by that global monopoly. In the short run it could be pretty harmful. Just an opinion I'm not too strongly tied to at the moment. It would be interesting to see an economic study or something.