Key point. This hearing is not just a one-off, it is *part* of an investigation. @davidcicilline says they have millions of documents from both the companies as well over a hundred competitors. #bigtechbarons
Now @JimPressOffice is giving the GOP opening statement. So far it's a reasonable statement, talking about dominance, making the point that "big is not bad." Serious statement discussing data and market structure. Bipartisan, this is good. #BigTechHearing
This is the stock price of #bigtechbarons since this investigation began. Trillions of dollars in an increase of market capitalization. #BigTechHearing
Love @RepJerryNadler bringing Emanuel Celler and his anti-monopoly subcommittee into the conversation. #BigTechBarons
This is amazing, just like the hearings I read when I researched Goliath.
Time for @Jim_Jordan. "Big tech is out to get conservatives." Talking about the World Health Organization and China, Amazon banning Trump and Twitch. #bigtechbarons
So far hearing nothing about monopoly or competition.🤔🤔🤔
What's so irritating about @Jim_Jordan is that everything he's talking about is *a monopoly problem* but he's here to defend monopoly and then harangue the monopolists for not being nicer to what *he thinks.* #BigTechHearing#BigTechBarons
It's kind of funny that @Jim_Jordan doesn't get to the defense of #BigTechBarons because it just doesn't fit in his haranguing of #bigtech for conservative bias. Jordan is now being a clown and being disruptive. @davidcicilline shuts him down hard.
It's so great that @davidcicilline made it 100% clear that this hearing is serious and that you don't fuck with him. #BigTechBarons
Jeff Bezos is now up talking up how awesome his Mom and Dad are. #BigTechBarons
"It is still Day One for this country." - Jeff Bezos
That's very much a 'what is good for General Motors is good for America' answer.
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
Mark Zuckerberg is on the stand, the FTC lawyer is grilling him on documents showing the point of the service is to connect to friends. This is about market definition. #ftcvmeta
FTC asks if Meta is still built on a 'social graph,' Zuckerberg says he's not sure what that means but that it's a 'core concept' of Facebook.
"The friend part has gone down quite a bit."
He wants the judge to see TikTok as a rival.
Zuckerberg emphasizes that connecting w/friends and family is important to Facebook but less and less important. This testimony is about showing how Meta is a monopolist in a clear market, social networking services connecting with friends/family.
The basic problem with America is that nearly all of our major institutions are led by vastly overpaid incompetent greedheads who all have agreed to not snitch on each other. It's easy to explain how to fix it once you get this basic diagnosis. Here are a few ideas.
1) Corporate boards are full of lazy kiss-assers who get $100k to show up to a meeting a few times a year. So how about this? No board members of a company can get paid while there's a strike going on at their company.
2) The Federal Reserve actually runs our economic policy. So how about saying that not all of the Fed board members can be millionaires? Some of them have to be borrowers and not just lenders.
American big tech firms are bad at building things because their focus is not on building things, it’s on monopolization and political power. No different than Boeing. This has been obvious for years. thebignewsletter.com/p/national-cha…
So an insane story by @musharbash_b, a private equity roll-up of fire trucks is why more than half the fire trucks in Los Angeles were out of service during the catastrophic wildfires in the Palisades and Eaton.
I do a lot on economic termites, this one's a big deal. Cities all over the country have to pay twice as much for fire equipment as they used to because there's now what appears to be some sort of fire equipment cartel.
1. Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion is bad because it was a way of taking the civil rights movement - which was about prohibiting economic discrimination at its core - and corrupting it to serve corporate interests. Here are some examples, starting with UnitedHealth Group.
2. Biglaw's Latham and Watkins bragged their team keeping poultry price-fixers out of jail was a historic 'all-women team' of defense lawyers.
3. Here's financier Brian Regan - who rolled up anesthesiology and radiology practices so he could price gouge - boosting the Women's Private Equity Summit. Equity is awesome!
1. Want some fun news before the Monday inauguration that you won't have heard anywhere else? The antitrust enforcers (Lina Khan et al) went full Tony Montana on big business this week before Trump people took over. Here's just part of what they did.
2. The FTC filed a monopolization claim against agricultural machine maker John Deere for generating $6 billion by prohibiting farmers from being able to repair their own equipment, a suit which Wired magazine calls a “tipping point” for the right to repair movement.
3. They also released another report on pharmacy benefit managers, including that of UnitedHealth Group, showing that these companies inflated prices for specialty pharmaceuticals by more than $7 billion.