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Yes, that is why, but they are wrong. A better framing would be to focus on specific problems: "Facebook owning both facebook.com and Instagram and both Messen

Yes, that is why, but they are wrong. A better framing would be to focus on specific problems: "Facebook owning both facebook.com and Instagram and both Messenger and WhatsApp give them too much market power in social sharing and messaging, so Instagram and WhatsApp should be spun back out", "Amazon should not be able to use sales metrics of other platform sellers to inform their own product development", etc. Identify market issues, figure out regulatory language that speaks to those issues. But "big companies are monopolies that must be broken up" is unhelpfully reductive.

bumby 5y ago
I agree with you, and I'm just following up for a finer point. It's my understanding the whole intent of anti-trust is consumer welfare. The connection between Amazon and pricing/competition seems to be a straight-forward connection between hurting consumer welfare and its market power in terms of Amazon's market power. But where does the connection come in between consumer welfare and the social media apps? I.e., how does FB hurt me by having the most/best information regarding my social network? Or is your stance it shouldn't be framed in terms of consumer welfare at all?
- sanderjd 5y ago
  Yeah I don't really buy the consumer welfare framing. Or maybe I do buy it for existing anti trust regulation. But I don't buy that it is the only thing we (as a society) should be looking at when considering regulation of companies. This isn't novel, we regulate other externalities even when the regulations themselves harm consumers in the direct sense. For instance, more environmental regulations result in higher prices. But they are often good for other reasons, like not poisoning drinking water. We just don't use anti trust regulation to do this. Basically I just don't see anti trust regulation as being the best way to target the diverse set of issues society sees with the big tech companies of the moment.

bumby 5y ago

I agree with you, and I'm just following up for a finer point. It's my understanding the whole intent of anti-trust is consumer welfare. The connection between Amazon and pricing/competition seems to be a straight-forward connection between hurting consumer welfare and its market power in terms of Amazon's market power. But where does the connection come in between consumer welfare and the social media apps? I.e., how does FB hurt me by having the most/best information regarding my social network? Or is your stance it shouldn't be framed in terms of consumer welfare at all?

sanderjd 5y ago
Yeah I don't really buy the consumer welfare framing. Or maybe I do buy it for existing anti trust regulation. But I don't buy that it is the only thing we (as a society) should be looking at when considering regulation of companies. This isn't novel, we regulate other externalities even when the regulations themselves harm consumers in the direct sense. For instance, more environmental regulations result in higher prices. But they are often good for other reasons, like not poisoning drinking water. We just don't use anti trust regulation to do this. Basically I just don't see anti trust regulation as being the best way to target the diverse set of issues society sees with the big tech companies of the moment.