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