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15 Jan, 4 tweets, 2 min read
Hey conservatives I know you're all mad about Silicon Valley censoring you but Trump's Antitrust Division chief Makan Delrahim's final act was to let Google complete its acquisition of Fitbit. Congrats for being completely inattentive to Trump's policy choices around big tech.
My critique of Democrats under Obama is they paid zero attention to the foreclosure crisis and much of Obama's policy framework. Conservatives have operated exactly as Democrats did, if not worse, completely uninterested in what Trump did - in this case empowering big tech.
The most meaningful action against big tech was @davidcicilline's 16 month investigation of large technology firms in the antitrust subcommittee in which he found lots of evidence of monopoly power.

@Jim_Jordan did everything he could to sabotage it.
And the antitrust suits brought against big tech firms? Those largely came from the states. The FTC's recent suit to break up Facebook happened because two Democrats got the Republican chair to vote to bring the case. GOPers @FTCPhillips and @CSWilsonFTC voted with Facebook.

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More from @matthewstoller

Matt Stoller Profile picture
14 Jan
Facebook was more helpful to the riot than Parler.

Let's follow the logic here.

Parler's business model is dangerous and should be illegal. Facebook caused even more violent activity than Parler. Therefore...
It's quite evident we have a serious problem with the business model of social media and tech platforms. Parler is a dangerous problem. Facebook is a much bigger much more dangerous problem.

And yes, Section 230 is the reason. mattstoller.substack.com/p/a-simple-thi…
Many who focus on first amendment issues for the last decade or so have held up Section 230 as an inviolable beacon of free speech, overlooking its role as a shield to let tech firms profit from illegal activity. That's a problem. mattstoller.substack.com/p/rumors-sprea…
Read 5 tweets
Matt Stoller Profile picture
12 Jan
We wrote a 200 page report on why corporate concentration - including the big tech radicalization engines - worsened under both Democratic and Republican administrations. It has to do with antitrust enforcement, and it's fixable by Biden.
We researched multiple sectors of the economy - big tech, newspapers, aerospace/defense, media, telecom, hospitals, pharma, (even Ticketmaster!) to show that policy under the Obama administration shaped our lives in ways that we didn't realize at the time.
From QAnon to high health care costs, American life flows through our corporations and markets, and those are structured by *policy.* And we have a to do list for Joe Biden, state enforcers and policymakers, and Congress.
Read 5 tweets
Matt Stoller Profile picture
11 Jan
I wrote up one simple thing Joe Biden can do to reset America. He should restore the FTC, which is the agency tasked with regulating social media, by appointing a real enforcer - Rohit Chopra - as Chair. mattstoller.substack.com/p/a-simple-thi…
I went over the life of Ashli Babbitt, the woman killed in the Capitol, and her experiences with war, monopolies and financial predators. Rage has roots. mattstoller.substack.com/p/a-simple-thi…
Babbitt was deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan, and served abroad for a total of eight deployments. She returned and revealed violent tendencies. She bought a small business adjacent to a monopoly, and then was preyed on by loan sharks. Then she went QAnon. mattstoller.substack.com/p/a-simple-thi…
Read 6 tweets
Matt Stoller Profile picture
10 Jan
1. Since a bunch of people are asking, here's my view of the Parler-AWS situation. Yes, Parler should be removed from AWS, but not the way it was done and not because Amazon feels like it or wants political favors from incoming Democrats.
2. The problem is that what Parler is doing probably should be illegal, because it should be responsible on product liability terms for the known outcomes of its product, aka violence. But it’s not illegal, bc Section 230 means it has no obligation for what its product fosters.
3. So we’re dealing with a legal product and there’s no grounds to remove it from AWS. That said, this isn't a Parler-problem specifically, because Parler isn't any different from Facebook, YouTube, or Grindr in terms of fostering violence. mattstoller.substack.com/p/rumors-sprea…
Read 6 tweets
Matt Stoller Profile picture
30 Dec 20
Henry Kissinger once asked “Who do I call if I want to speak to Europe?“

The EU finally has an answer: Xi Jinping
Merkel is probably Germany’s third worst leader. Just a complete monster.
With this deal with China, Merkel just forced the US to see the European Union as hostile to our interests. She’s far worse than Trump. And great job Obama in endorsing Macron. He really showed up for China.
Read 4 tweets
Matt Stoller Profile picture
21 Dec 20
Rich Republican white people flipped to Biden as non-whites flipped to Trump. Can we be honest now and admit Trump won in 2016 due economic frustration and all the careerist racecraft scolds were embarrassingly wrong? Or do we have to wait until President Hawley takes office?
Here's Paul Krugman calling Josh Hawley a Nazi for making a class-based argument. In the time since Hawley has worked with noted anti-semite Richard Blumenthal to address big tech and famous bigot Bernie Sanders to move relief checks to working families.
That last tweet was sarcastic. The point here is the pervasive nature of what @thomasfrank_ calls Anti-Populism, how elites frame calls for democratic self-government over rule by experts as malevolent and dangerous.
Read 4 tweets

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