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Biden Has to Play Hardball with Internet Platforms

Biden Has to Play Hardball with Internet Platforms

Biden Has to Play Hardball with Internet Platforms
Jul 24, 2021 2 mins, 19 secs

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The federal government’s campaign to reform internet platforms dramatically escalated this week.

Then he appointed Jonathan Kanter, architect of the EU’s antitrust case against Google, to run the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division.

Most Americans understand this, but don’t want to be inconvenienced by losing what they like about internet platforms.

The problem is that platforms like Google and Facebook are too big to be safe.

At their current scale, with roughly twice as many active users as there are people in China, platforms like Google and Facebook are a systemic threat analogous to climate change or the pandemic.

The tendency of policymakers to date has been to view the harms from internet platforms not as systemic, but as a series of coincident issues.

Platforms could use this power to make users happier, healthier, or more successful, but instead they use data to exploit the emotional triggers of each user because it’s easier to do and generates more revenue and profit.

Since 2016, politicians, civil society groups, and activists like me have been trying to persuade Facebook to alter its business practices for the public good and the executives have consistently chosen company over country.

President Biden must choose between the happiness of those who own the platforms and the safety and wellbeing of everyone else.

Reform will ultimately require legislation and legal action in three arenas: consumer safety, privacy, and antitrust.

Imposing liability and placing limits on recommendation engines and algorithmic amplification for attention are the minimum requirements to protect consumer safety.

As with consumer protection, privacy laws are just beginning their Congressional journey.

When the Industrial Revolution ushered in a new era of concentrated economic power, the country fought monopolies again for nearly a century, until Robert Bork began emasculating antitrust laws in the 1970s.

Even when they were fully enforced, existing antitrust laws never contemplated the kind of economic power deployed by internet platforms, something made obvious by the opinion of a federal judge who threw out antitrust cases against Facebook files by the FTC and state attorneys general.

The game-changing opportunity would be for the Department of Justice to join or take over the (apparently strong) price fixing case against Google and Facebook filed by the attorney general of Texas.

In addition, the advertising markets created by Google, Facebook, and others, which have roots in Wall Street’s high-frequency trading, should be subject to regulation by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which would open them up to scrutiny and possibly limit anticompetitive behavior.

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