Lina Kahn, Dina Srinivasa, Shoshana Zuboff, Carole Cadwalla
THE FOUR WOMEN WHO ARE SAVING DEMOCRACY
#Antitrust #Law #Fail Kills Our Democracy
Antitrust law is failing to secure our freedom, our markets, our right to self-determination, our competition, and our fundamental rights.
Lina Kahn Amazon’s Antitrust Paradox, which showed how Ronald Reagan’s antitrust policies, inspired by ideological extremists at the University of Chicago’s economics department, had created a space for abusive monopolists who could crush innovation, workers’ rights, and competition without ever falling afoul of orthodox antitrust law.
The Antitrust Case Against Facebook ~ Dina Srinivasan
Can Antitrust Law Rein in Facebook’s Data-Mining Profit Machine? ~ Dina Srinivasan
The Antitrust Case Against Facebook: a turning point in the debate over Big Tech and monopoly ~
Shoshana Zuboff’s Surveillance Capitalism machine learning creates devastating behavior modification tools that allow tech companies to manipulate us so thoroughly that we’re in danger of losing our free will.
Srinivasan shows how Facebook came to dominate our online discourse through activities that would have been prohibited under pre-Reagan theories of antitrust, and how, prior to these monopolistic tactics, Facebook was not able to conduct surveillance on its users, having to contend with multiple, bruising PR disasters and user revolts when it tried to do so.
Moreover, Facebook’s monopoly has enabled a series of moves that worsened its impact on our democracy and our markets: once Facebook became the dominant means by which people learned about the news, media companies were forced to use Facebook to promote their work, and to put Facebook tracking beacons (AKA “Like buttons”) on every article, giving Facebook the power to build ever widening dossiers on 2.3 billion users.
And since Facebook also became the dominant means by which users discovered many kinds of products, merchants also put Like buttons and engaged in other surveillant integrations with Facebook, allowing Facebook to monopolize intelligence about ad performance — that is, when an click on a Facebook ad yielded up a sale, Facebook often knew about it — and this allowed the company to charge more for ads, and to tighten its grip over the ad marketplace.
Handmaidens to Authoritarism, #Mercer, #Zuckerberg, #Sandberg, #Page, #Brinn, #Dorsey
How Facebook Broke Democracy
THEY INVITED THE FOX INTO THE HEN HOUSE
THEY ALL HER SPEAK AT THE TED TALK
In an unmissable talk, journalist Carole Cadwalla digs into one of the most perplexing events in recent times: the UK’s super-close 2016 vote to leave the European Union.
Esteemed Reporter Pulitzer finalist Carole #Cadwalla
My TED talk: how I took on the tech titans in their lair
Mercer, Zuckerberg, Sandberg, Page, Brinn, Dorsey Handmaidens to Authoritarism
If you believe in Capitalism you must believe in strict extensive anti-trust and regulations – see Elizabeth Warren.
“SheThePeople” #SheThePeople
$1.5 trillion in student debt, which has experienced nearly 157 percent cumulative growth in the last 11 years.
Warren announced a bold plan to cancel as much as $50,000 in debt for 42 million Americans, eliminate undergraduate tuition at public universities and colleges, help students pay for non-tuition fees like room and board, create a $50 billion fund for Historically Black Colleges and Universities and expand the pool of people who can receive federal Pell Grants to help pay for college.
“We got into this crisis because state governments and the federal government decided that instead of treating higher education like our public school system—free and accessible to all Americans—they’d rather cut taxes for billionaires and giant corporations and offload the cost of higher education onto students and their families. The student debt crisis is the direct result of this failed experiment,” Warren wrote in a lengthy Medium post outlining her proposals. “Once we’ve cleared out the debt that’s holding down an entire generation of Americans, we must ensure that we never have another student debt crisis again.”
Warren’s plan will increase taxes on the country’s most wealthy families and corporations to generate an estimated $2.75 trillion over 10 years. The Ultra-Millionaire Tax would pay for universal child care and the college debt and tuition policies and generate nearly $1 trillion more.
https://www.newsweek.com/economists-question-elizabeth-warren-free-tuition-plan-1402635
WE’VE BEEN BORKED
Amazon Violating U.S. Antitrust Laws.This Law Student Has Evidence.
http://inthesetimes.com/article/21850/is-amazon-using-predatory-pricing-in-violation-of-antitrust-laws-monopoly
Amazon is laying in wait, in other words, to become a monopoly.
The technical term for this is predatory pricing, and it’s actually illegal under U.S. antitrust laws. You can’t drop prices with the intent to monopolize. But predatory pricing is extremely difficult to prove in court. Plaintiffs bringing suit would have to demonstrate that Amazon set prices below the cost of production, which is difficult without access to the internal books. In addition, plaintiffs would have to establish that Amazon’s practices had a high likelihood of successfully creating a lucrative monopoly. The high bar is thanks to Robert Bork, the godfather of modern antitrust theory.