I have a big announcement. I'm taking my Substack on monopolies paid. I'll explain more tomorrow, but the gist is that the newsletter has been so much more successful at addressing monopolies than I ever could have dreamed.
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Matt Stoller
@matthewstoller
Hi. I work at the American Economic Liberties Project.
Also, I wrote the book Goliath, and I write a monopoly-focused newsletter BIG: mattstoller.substack.com
Matt Stoller’s Tweets
We're headed into the last week when this legislative package can be passed, it's all been up to Schumer throughout.
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1. There's been a lot of work on monopoly power and big tech. Today, whether Congress passes any antitrust legislation is now up to one man. Senate Majority leader Chuck Schumer. mattstoller.substack.com/p/get-antitrus
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19. That’s the question one should ask, if you want to know whether antitrust will or won’t pass Congress.
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18. Will Schumer throw away years of Congressional work on addressing the problem of monopoly? Will he show himself as a dishonest leader willing to promise and then not deliver to his own members? Or will he actually move something through Congress?
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17. So Schumer can choose to put some or all of these antitrust bills into the omnibus. This legislation is supported on both sides of the aisle, and even opponents aren't going to shut down the government to block modest changes to antitrust law.
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16. There's no longer time for a vote. So is antitrust dead? Not quite. It can still be put into the 'omnibus' end of year government funding bill. Who chooses what goes into that bill? It's Chuck Schumer (and Mitch McConnell, somewhat).
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15. He knows his caucus wants to move these bills, and that he will look bad if it turns out he just straight-up lied to Klobuchar. He is cross-pressured on the issue. And if antitrust legislation dies, I bet he’d probably be fine with it.
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14. Schumer has some anti-monopoly credentials. He put anti-monopolists like on the Federal Trade Commission. He inserted antitrust into the 2018 "Better Deal" platform.
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13. I think Schumer just doesn't prioritize antitrust. He's a deal-maker, and corporate power doesn't matter to him.
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12. Others think it's because one of his daughter works for Meta, and another works for Amazon. I don't buy that either.
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11. Why not? Hard to say. Some believe it's because he was in Seattle earlier this year picking up big tech money. I'm not convinced.
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10. The last remaining hurdle is getting the bills to pass the Senate floor. So Schumer’s promise to hold a vote on antitrust bills back in May was a big deal. The problem is that he just didn't... hold a vote.
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9. Taken together, these bills would begin addressing monopoly power. Since the incoming House GOP leadership has a demonstrated hostility to most antitrust legislation, passing these bills now is the last chance to actually get some of them done, at least for a few more years.
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8. There's also a procedural bill that would change filing fees and make it easier for state-level officials to bring cases. mattstoller.substack.com/p/boom-antitru
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7. Another piece of legislation would give more bargaining power to newspapers vis-a-vis Google. A similar bill is succeeding in saving the free press in Australia.
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6. This includes legislation to address app stores. Similar laws in Europe are already breaking up Apple's control.
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5. As a result of all of this work, these committees have produced legislation that passed different legislative stages, including the full House of Representatives.
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4. The second topic is the general monopoly crisis. Senator held hearings on big data, app stores, hospitals, ‘smart’ homes, food supply chains, online marketplaces, innovation and antitrust, newspapers, credit cards, baby formula, etc.
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3. Since 2019, different committees in Congress have been aggressively looking at two basic monopoly problems. The first was big tech, which the House Antitrust subcommittee investigated in-depth for 19 months.
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2. In May of this year, Schumer made an important and surprising promise. He said he’d hold a vote on some or all of the antitrust legislation that Congress had been working on over the last three years.
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1. There's been a lot of work on monopoly power and big tech. Today, whether Congress passes any antitrust legislation is now up to one man. Senate Majority leader Chuck Schumer.
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I was today years old when I learned I can chart Binance Coin on the terminal
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.’s legacy is on the line as the Senate negotiates an omnibus spending bill.
Quick thread on the antitrust legislation pending in Congress, and what it means for working people, honest businesses, and American democracy. 👇🧵
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Let’s give some credit where it’s due to Eric Schmidt of Google for being the first to overreact to personal but public info being reposted about him, visionary!
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A reminder as Meta sends proxies to influence public perception of the FTC’s action to enjoin their bid for VR dominance: They outnumber the FTC 10:1. This is evident in the courtroom, too.
That’s not even counting the Chamber of Progress and other 3rd party spin funded by Meta.
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From today’s Congressional oversight hearing on antitrust enforcement: @JusticeATR is down 352 staff since 1979. @FTC is down 500. FTC is outnumbered 10:1 in its action against Meta/FB.
The 45-year erosion of US fair competition policy was as structural as it was ideological.
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Good for
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The old regime at Twitter governed by its own whims and biases and it sure looks like the new regime has the same problem. I oppose it in both cases. And I think those journalists who were reporting on a story of public importance should be reinstated.
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If I recall Judge Davila's exact words when Meta moved to strike Singer's entire testimony, he said something like: "Well, I'm obviously not going to grant that motion, but you're free to brief it."
In other words, this is a distraction and hopefully isn't being taken seriously.
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Celebrate Elon Musk, but Don't Lose Sight of Big Tech's Structural Problems newsweek.com/celebrate-elon
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The lesson here is not ‘Elon Musk is bad’ it’s that Twitter is a public highway and should be regulated as such.
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Oh stop it, this is not unprecedented. It happened to lots of people, just not fancy liberals.
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The left are still having trouble connecting finance and monopoly to what they care about. It's why they got jammed at the last minute into screwing rail workers. They just didn't know anything about railroad regulation or hedge funds so it became 'general strike or bust.'
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The problem for the right is they have been tricked by libertarians into confusing the bureaucracy for executive authority. So they end up working with corporations to empower unaccountable bureaucrats. That's why Trump couldn't govern, he was hamstrung by libertarians.
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The entire liberal censorship regime was architected under the guise of "safety" and "harm reduction" Alex Jones, gender issues, COVID "misinformation," Hunter Biden laptop and Trump ban. Safetyism coded in a different ideology is just as bad
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"Nancy Pelosi is advocating for Sen. Josh Hawley’s bill banning TikTok on government devices be added to the omnibus spending package."
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The Musk journalist bans are terrible but there is something frustrating about reporters only caring when one of their own - or someone ideologically similar - is driven from Twitter. Plenty of conservatives and leftists have faced arbitrary bans and shadowbans on Twitter.
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One thing to realize about Musk’s stake in Twitter is that it’s probably at an equity value of zero at this point and he knows it. He’s lost $26B of his own money and $7B of his friends’ money. All he has is the fun of being in control now, there’s nothing to protect.
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Having been on the receiving end of @keitholbermann's tweet mobs more than once, I can't say I'm going to miss him. But I don't like seeing anyone get suspended, so I hope this isn't permanent.
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Re: the banning of reporters who have tweeted about Elon Musk’s jet, Twitter's head of trust & safety Ella Irwin tells me: “Without commenting on any specific accounts, I can confirm that we will suspend any accounts that violate our privacy policies and put other users at risk."
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