and their counterpart in the other coalition is the patronage networks that put judges in a 40 year sinecure program from age 22 to retirement, all to be part of the same team
and forget anything else that occurs in those 40 years, their loyalty bought, less than a thousand people
Do you think she failed? I feel like she was more restrained by the fact that the Democratic Party doesn’t actually want to bully tech so she wasn’t fully empowered like the republican freaks are always when they’re in power
i know all of this is complicated and building cases is hard and takes a long time but i still think going after meta first and earlier would have been more publicly compelling than google
It’s sad that good policy is now beholden so much to optics. Yes. It was always thus. But it really seems to be an outsize constraint on what can get done.
Otoh, having a politics which is completely open to corruption and a tech sector now awash with money is not great.
Yes. Google to many is the easy search engine and email service without a clear face to the name; Meta is dead-eyed Mark Zuckerberg. Easier pitch to be like “we’re going after dead-eyed Mark Zuckerberg”
i mean, i don’t think the average person hates zuckerberg the way i do, but google provides a much broader variety of products than meta does and has more competitors for them
I think the average user also has 0 understanding of how their core ad business works and it's externalities. "Facebook is destroying civil society" is easy to digest and largely believed already
Yep. A lot of people are still confused about why Google Search sucks now. They haven't yet learned that it was the result of human decisions to prioritize profit over accuracy and ease of use. Almost everyone who's willing to accept it knows by this point that Meta is terrible.
i think the difference between `neo Brandeisian antitrust is it's targeted at market power, while Trumpian bullying constrains some degree of their managerial autonomy but leaves their market power (and control of employees) intact.
I think some companies like Disney are capitulating to Trump out of fear of legislative or regulatory reprisals, but in other cases, like Meta in particular, Trump's threats are pushing on an open door. "Oh no, don't make me flood the feed with transphobic AI slop," said Bre'r Mark.
it's tough when the intents are "I want to set up guard rails to protect people" vs "I want to fuck them up if they don't pay me a protection racket premium"
Don’t agree really. Bully is totally the wrong word bc it implies threats justified by power. She has an actual vision based in and on the law, but the FTC was often constrained by other factors.
So what are you saying she should've done? "Nothing," in case Biden/Congress/courts/media didn't do their part, resulting in a ineffectual "light bullying" situation?
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for it strengthens their position in the party, when other people in the party fail, and their enemy gets stronger
something something “gambit”
and forget anything else that occurs in those 40 years, their loyalty bought, less than a thousand people
Otoh, having a politics which is completely open to corruption and a tech sector now awash with money is not great.
Agencies can push then a texas judge puts out a nationwide injunction a week later until 5 years hence when scotus says “lol rules”