Thread by @rohangrey

After thinking more about @TheStalwart's argument that Microsoft should pay a fee to govt to offset the undue benefits it gets from a govt-induced acquisition, I've decided I think it's a bad idea (no shade at Joe, the motivation is sound). The reason is that the real benefit to

Microsoft long term is not in acquiring a specific product or business but in expanding its already vast data empire. The problem is that the social harms and risks posed by that kind of expansion can't be offset by "paying money". Once the data is collected and consolidated the

Damage is done. In this sense, making Microsoft pay a fee is the firm-level equivalent to trying to impose a tax on data-gathering as a solution to the threat of surveillance capitalism. It's a category error to think this risk can be stripped from larger social context, priced

properly, and then offset through confiscatory taxation. And more perniciously it lets Microsoft off the hook for whatever harm it does afterwards: "we paid our fee to society so fuck off and leave us alone".

The appropriate "fee" that we should be imposing on Microsoft in

this context is a new, tougher, and differently motivated regulatory regime. Revenue is no substitute.

@NathanTankus and I made a similar (more general) point a while back about the misuse of corporate taxation to achieve goals best achieved by direct regulation and/or direct sanction.

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