#EU antitrust

[trendynewsnow]

The Legacy of Margrethe Vestager: Pioneering Tech Regulation in the EU

The Legacy of Margrethe Vestager: A Trailblazer in Tech Regulation Margrethe Vestager, the esteemed European Union antitrust enforcer known for her formidable stance against the tech industry, recently strolled through her office in Brussels, contemplating the various artifacts she had gathered over her decade-long tenure, which is set to conclude later this month. Among the items was a striking…

[world-store]

Google Planned to ‘Go Big in Europe’ After EU Android Case

 Google — under fire in court for allegedly resting on its laurels thanks to its 90% market dominance — only made an effort to beef up the quality of its search engine in the European Union after being hit by a record antitrust fine, according to internal documents revealed in the US Justice Department’s monopolization case against the tech giant. Alphabet Inc.’s Google planned to improve its…

[mostlysignssomeportents]

To save the news, repeal the app tax

Today (June 7), I’m keynoting the Re:publica conference in Berlin.

Tomorrow (June 8) at 8PM, I’m at Otherland Books in Berlin with my novel Red Team Blues.

Big Tech steals from the news, but what it steals is money, not content. Talking about the news, excerpting it, linking to it, quoting it — these are all beneficial, normal news activities. If you can’t talk about the news, it’s not news — it’s a secret.

But tech does steal from news. A variety of monopolistic tricks allows tech to interpose itself between reporters, publishers and outlets, and the audiences they serve. By creating chokepoints between the news and its audience, tech can extract gigantic sums from the news.

And because the news itself is dominated by the same kinds of extractive, vicious, gigantic corporations, the shit flows downhill: the first victims of attacks on news profitability are news workers — reporters, technical staff, illustrators, photographers. A news outlet has to be really starving before it turns to the money claimed by vulture capitalists who buy distressed debt, or hedge funds who roll up papers, or wealthy owners.

Anything that can’t go on forever eventually stops. Tech’s ripoffs have reached a breaking point, and there’s a broad coalition of journalists, media companies, audiences and politicians ready to do something about this. Now the question is: what should we do?

Whatever we do it should:

Maintain broad access to the news;

Make it easier for new news outlets to pop up;

Make it easier for new tech outlets that carry the news to pop up, too.

It shouldn’t simply transfer funds to bond holders who own newspaper debt, or shareholders of media companies, or billionaire dilettante news proprietors. It shouldn’t make the news and tech into “partners”: we want the press to hold tech to account, not join forces with it.

A month ago, EFF and I started publishing a five-part series of policy prescriptions “saving the news from tech.” Part one was the “curtain raiser,” setting up the whole program:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/04/saving-news-big-tech

Each week since, I’ve published a specific policy recommendation. The first one was breaking up the ad-tech industry, on the lines suggested by Senator Mike Lee’s AMERICA Act:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/05/save-news-we-must-shatter-ad-tech

Next was passing comprehensive privacy law, which would kill off surveillance ads and force a switch to “contextual ads” (ads based on what you’re looking at, not who you are):

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/05/save-news-we-must-ban-surveillance-advertising

Both of these proposals are aimed at reducing the share of ad money claimed by tech, especially the ad-tech duopoly of Google/Meta. Ad-tech claims more than 50% of every ad dollar spent, thanks to their chokepoint on ads. The ad-tech market is a cesspool of fraud, abuse and creepy practices. Fixing ads would make everyone better off, by freeing us all from ubiquitous commercial surveillance, and it would make the news better off, letting the news claim a much larger share of ad revenues, whether they are large media brands or independent reporters covering a niche subject in depth.

This week’s installment turns to subscription revenues. When Steve Jobs launched the Ipad in 2010, he set himself up as a daddy figure for the traumataized press, promising them a return to subscription-based business, with seamless payment processing through the apps in his walled garden:

https://memex.craphound.com/2010/04/01/why-i-wont-buy-an-ipad-and-think-you-shouldnt-either/

But since then, the mobile duopoly of Apple/Google has simply recapitulated the abusive extraction of the ad-tech industry, but for apps. Both companies charge a whopping 30% to process in-app payments, and both companies have strict rules banning app makers from evading this 30% app tax by steering customers to the web to complete payments:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/06/save-news-we-must-open-app-stores

The companies — nominally bitter competitors — have nevertheless converged on this 30% vig, allegedly without any anticompetitive collusion. Apple uses Digital Rights Management (DRM) to lock people into using its App Store, threatening anyone who reverse-engineers its devices to add competing stores with five year prison sentences under Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).

Google’s Android does have a facility for “side-loading” apps that aren’t in its app store, but the company uses a web of commercial requirements and technological tricks to prevent a competitor from emerging:

https://theplatformlaw.blog/2023/05/24/why-the-proposed-commitments-offered-by-google-to-the-uk-competition-authority-regarding-in-app-purchases-are-wrong-and-will-make-the-situation-of-app-developers-worse/

The result is a massive transfer from the news to tech: payment processing normally costs 2–3%, but these companies manage to take a 30% bite out of every subscription dollar collected in-app. Some very large outlets like the NY Times can drive readers to sign up on the web and escape the app tax, but the additional friction costs even these large publishers a fortune in lost subscribers — and smaller outlets have even less leverage over readers and are corralled into paying the app tax, making it a regressive tax indeed.

Unrigging the mobile payments market would produce good results far beyond the news, of course. Games publishers, independent creators, and office and productivity app makers would all benefit from no longer having to pay the app tax. And so would their users: these app makers are passing on most of those payment costs to us, and we end up paying them, because there are only two major mobile platforms and they both charge the same app tax.

In the EU, the Digital Markets Act (DMA) will force app stores to open up, paving the way for alternative app stores:

https://www.theverge.com/2022/3/25/22996248/apple-sideloading-apps-store-third-party-eu-dma-requirement

In the US, there’s proposed laws like the Open Apps Markets Act, which is likely to be reintroduced in this legislative session:

https://www.blumenthal.senate.gov/newsroom/press/release/blumenthal-blackburn-and-klobuchar-introduce-bipartisan-antitrust-legislation-to-promote-app-store-competition

The mobile duopoly hate this, of course, and claim that forcing them to permit rival app stores would put users’ security at risk. It’s true that this could happen, but it doesn’t need to: security and openness are compatible:

https://www.schneier.com/essays/archives/2022/01/letter-to-the-us-senate-judiciary-committee-on-app-stores.html

Next week, I’ll conclude the series with a post on applying the end-to-end principle to social media, to prevent platforms from holding a publication’s subscribers hostage in order to extract “boosting” fees from media. Once that’s out, we’re going to gather all these posts into a single, downloadable PDF, suitable for sharing with the news junkies in your life, your friends in the media business, and your elected reps.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/06/07/curatorial-vig/#app-tax

[Image ID: EFF's banner for the save news series; the word 'NEWS' appears in pixelated, gothic script in the style of a newspaper masthead. Beneath it in four entwined circles are logos for breaking up ad-tech, ending surveillance ads, opening app stores, and end-to-end delivery. All the icons except for 'open app stores' are greyed out.]

[stupid-elf]

"Inexplicably"

[jcmarchi]

EU says Elon Musk’s X allowed disinformation to run wild - CyberTalk

New Post has been published on https://thedigitalinsider.com/eu-says-elon-musks-x-allowed-disinformation-to-run-wild-cybertalk/

EU says Elon Musk’s X allowed disinformation to run wild - CyberTalk

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY:

The tech media mogul’s platform is the first to see charges under a new EU social media law.

The European Union is taking Elon Musk to task over his transformation of the Twitter social media site (now X) into a haven for disinformation and dubious content.

On Friday, the EU Commission formally charged X with failing to respect the Digital Services Act (DSA), a law that’s intended to restrict toxic content and predatory algorithms.

The platform has broken rules regarding “dark patterns” — deceptive tactics that push people towards certain products and services.

Investigative details

The European Commission’s investigation into X started in December of 2023, as prompted by the platform’s failure to prevent disinformation and content manipulation.

X has been accused of allowing disinformation and hate speech to “run wild,” and in the eyes of the EU Commission, has rolled out misleading authentication features, which block external researchers from accessing the tools required to scrutinize the spread of malicious content on the platform.

In August of 2023, the European Union called X the “largest spreader of Russian lies and propaganda” out of all existing social media sites.

EU Commission’s findings

The EU Commission has shared three preliminary findings in relation to X’s DSA non-compliance:

1. The Commission found that X’s so-called blue checks had mislead users into thinking that certain accounts and content were trustworthy and verified, when in-fact they were not.

Because anyone can purchase a blue check for between eight and eleven dollars, cyber criminals abused the system in order to spread malicious material.

2. For those who are less familiar with EU regulations, this is a bit more obscure…The Commission also found that X failed to comply with transparency rules around advertising. X allegedly put up barriers that prevented adequate advertising supervision and research, which help to ensure that platforms are safe for the general public.

3. Along similar lines, the DSA mandates that organizations provide public data access for research purposes. However, X prohibited researchers from engaging in corresponding data collection and analysis activities. Initiatives appeared thwarted, or researchers were forced to pay disproportionately high sums for data access.

Social media safety crackdown

In light of the European Commission’s findings, X could face a multi-million Euro fine — up to 6% of the company’s global turnover.

In regards to social media safety more broadly, the DSA has also launched investigations into AliExpress, Meta’s Facebook and Instagram, and TikTok.

“The DSA has transparency at its very core, and we are determined to ensure that all platforms, including X, comply with EU legislation,” said the European Union’s antitrust chief, Margrethe Vestager.

Unexpected plot twist

In a post on X, Elon Musk stated that his company was presented with an “illegal secret deal” by the European Commission. The deal would have enabled X to avoid a fine if the company censored speech on the platform.

“The other platforms accepted that deal,” Musk wrote, without offering any evidence. He continued by explaining that X rejected the bargain.

For more on this story, click here. For further insights into disinformation, click here. Lastly, to receive cyber security thought leadership articles, groundbreaking research and emerging threat analyses each week, subscribe to the CyberTalk.org newsletter.

[jobaaj]

🔴BREAKING NEWS: There’s a Chocolate Cartel!🍫 Oreo has been fined $366 million!!🍪 🤔 What's the scoop?

▪ Mondelēz International, the company behind Oreo, has been slammed with a colossal fine of $365.7 million (€337.5 million), marking it as the EU's ninth largest fine ever!

▪ Mondelēz is a global titan in the production of chocolate, biscuits, and coffee, boasting a portfolio of beloved brands including 5star, Cadbury, Cadbury Dairy Milk, Oreo, Toblerone, Bournvita, 7days, Freia, Milka, Sour Patch Kids, Chips Ahoy, Tang, and Triscuit, sold across 150+ countries!

🧐 Curious why?

▪ It's all about anticompetitive behavior.

▪ The EU’s competition commissioner has accused Mondelēz of limiting cross-border trade of chocolate, biscuits, and coffee products within the EU, making consumers pay more!

▪ The investigation uncovered 22 instances of Mondelēz engaging in anticompetitive agreements or coordinated practices.

▪ One notable case involved Mondelēz refusing to supply a German trader to block resale in Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, and Romania, where prices are higher!!

😲Interestingly:

▪ The fine was reduced by 15% when the company accepted its wrongdoing!

▪ "This historical matter is not representative of who we are and the strong culture of compliance for which we strive," it said. ❓Should there be stricter punishments for such acts?? Follow Jobaaj Stories (the media arm of Jobaaj.com Group for more)

[beesmygod]

is google insane or did it forget about the legal right to ablocking lol. are they trying to challenge the EU? bc they're not going to win that one. europe doesnt think this shit is cute

ive been flicking settings and programs on and off and updating drivers and shit trying to get youtube to load faster but it's being artificially throttled by google bc im using firefox

like. did they forget what antitrust suits are

[jjbizconsult]

Big win for EU as Apple cracks open its mobile payment system! 🇪🇺

[mworldnews]

Exclusive-Apple offers to let rivals access tap-and-go tech in EU antitrust case, sources say

Apple has offered to let rivals access its tap-and-go mobile payments systems used for mobile wallets, three people familiar with the matter said, a move that could settle EU antitrust charges and stave off a possible hefty fine. The EU competition enforcer last year charged Apple with curbing rivals’ access to its tap-and-go technology, Near-Field Communication (NFC), making it difficult for…

[platformonomics]

Platformonomics TGIF #23: September 22, 2023

New post format: a weekly rollup of links, comments on those links, activity updates and attempts at humor.  The intention is quicker hits in addition to the less frequent big posts and more timely hammering on my favorite themes. This is my primary hangout until the contours of the post-Twitter world become clear. Be sure to subscribe below and to the right to receive all my output via…

[trendynewsnow]

Upcoming Key Dates and Developments in EU Climate Policy and Antitrust Cases

Key Diary Dates Monday, 21 October: The European Parliament’s environment committee is set to vote on its stance regarding the upcoming climate COP29, which will take place in Baku, Azerbaijan, from 11 to 22 November 2024. Tuesday, 22 & Wednesday, 23 October: Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) will engage in debates and subsequent voting on the 2025 EU budget, as they push back against…

[phonemantra-blog]

Meta Considers Offering Ad-Free Facebook and Instagram in Europe to Address Regulatory Scrutiny Meta Platforms, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, is exploring the introduction of paid versions of these social media platforms for European Union (EU) users. This move is seen as a response to increasing scrutiny from EU regulators, aiming to provide an ad-free experience to paying subscribers while continuing to offer free versions supported by ads within the EU. Why is Meta Considering Paid Versions? In an effort to address privacy concerns and regulatory pressure from the EU, Meta is contemplating the introduction of paid versions of Facebook and Instagram. These paid versions would serve as an alternative to Meta's existing ad-based services, which heavily rely on data analysis. Balancing Advertisements and User Privacy The proposed paid versions of Facebook and Instagram would be ad-free, offering users a more private and uninterrupted experience. However, Meta intends to maintain free versions of these apps, featuring ads, to cater to users who opt not to subscribe to the paid service. EU Regulatory Scrutiny Meta's decision to explore ad-free paid versions comes as a response to mounting regulatory challenges in the EU. The company has faced antitrust investigations and lost legal battles related to data collection without user consent. Pricing Details Remain Unclear While the company is considering these ad-free versions, the cost of subscription remains undisclosed. Meta has not yet confirmed how much users in the EU would need to pay for the ad-free experience. Meta's Ongoing Battle in Norway In addition to EU challenges, Meta has been fined heavily by Norway's data protection authority for privacy breaches, with daily fines amounting to NOK 1 million. The company is currently seeking a temporary injunction against this order. Possible FAQs: 1. Why is Meta considering ad-free paid versions of Facebook and Instagram in the EU? Meta is exploring this option in response to increasing scrutiny from EU regulators and to provide an ad-free experience to users concerned about privacy. 2. Will free versions of Facebook and Instagram still be available in the EU? Yes, Meta plans to continue offering free versions of these apps with ads to users in the EU alongside the paid ad-free versions. 3. How much will the paid versions cost? The pricing for the ad-free versions has not been confirmed yet. Meta has not provided details about subscription costs. 4. Why is Meta facing fines in Norway, and what is the company doing about it? Meta has been fined by Norway's data protection authority for privacy breaches. The company is currently seeking a temporary injunction to contest the fines. 5. Is this move by Meta related to the recent antitrust investigations in the EU? Yes, Meta's decision to explore ad-free paid versions is partly a response to regulatory challenges, including antitrust investigations, in the EU.

[nuadox]

Microsoft will no longer package Teams and Office software in Europe in order to avoid EU antitrust proceedings

- By Nuadox Crew -

Microsoft will no longer include its Teams video conferencing app with its Office software in Europe to preempt potential antitrust penalties.

The move comes after the European Union's executive Commission initiated a formal investigation in response to concerns raised by Slack Technologies in 2020.

--

Source: AP

Read Also

40 US states agree to $392M settlement with Google over location-tracking charges

[holstercoded]

There is a reason French economics programs are not well respected and they set out to prove it every single day of their life

[jcmarchi]

Where's Google's Competitive Advantage in Generative AI? It's in The Chips, Microsoft Says - Technology Org

New Post has been published on https://thedigitalinsider.com/wheres-googles-competitive-advantage-in-generative-ai-its-in-the-chips-microsoft-says-technology-org/

Where's Google's Competitive Advantage in Generative AI? It's in The Chips, Microsoft Says - Technology Org

Microsoft has recently drawn public attention to Google’s dominance in generative artificial intelligence, saying that the tech giant’s vast data repository and AI-optimized hardware are the key factors allowing it to dominate the field.

Scientific discovery, artificial intelligence – conceptual artistic interpretation. Image generated with DALL·E 3

This assertion points to the intense competition between the two industry behemoths.

Microsoft’s response came under a request for comment from the EU antitrust regulators regarding the level of competition in generative AI. The consultation initiated by the European Commission in January sought insights into the competitive dynamics of generative AI, a field witnessing rapid growth driven by technologies like Microsoft-backed OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s chatbot Gemini.

In its report to the Commission, Microsoft highlighted Google’s unique position as the sole vertically integrated company, providing it with autonomy and strength across all AI layers, from specialized chips to a thriving mobile app store.

Microsoft emphasized that other companies must rely on partnerships to innovate and compete, unlike Google.

Microsoft also clearly emphasized Google’s proprietary AI semiconductors, which are expected to offer this company a lasting competitive advantage, along with its extensive repositories of exclusive data sourced from Google Search Index and YouTube.

Next, Microsoft pointed out that Google’s unparalleled access to vast video content, estimated at 14 billion videos hosted on YouTube, provides a significant competitive advantage in training its large language model Gemini, a resource unavailable to other AI developers.

In essence, Microsoft’s observations uncover the fact that data and hardware infrastructure in shaping the competitive environment of generative AI. In this regard, Google is positioned as a formidable player with a distinct advantage poised to influence the future trajectory of the industry.

Written by Vytautas Valinskas

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Lina Khan’s future is the future of the Democratic Party — and America

On OCTOBER 23 at 7PM, I'll be in DECATUR, presenting my novel THE BEZZLE at EAGLE EYE BOOKS.

On the one hand, the anti-monopoly movement has a future no matter who wins the 2024 election – that's true even if Kamala Harris wins but heeds the calls from billionaire donors to fire Lina Khan and her fellow trustbusters.

In part, that's because US antitrust laws have broad "private rights of action" that allow individuals and companies to sue one another for monopolistic conduct, even if top government officials are turning a blind eye. It's true that from the Reagan era to the Biden era, these private suits were few and far between, and the cases that were brought often died in a federal courtroom. But the past four years has seen a resurgence of antitrust rage that runs from left to right, and from individuals to the C-suites of big companies, driving a wave of private cases that are prevailing in the courts, upending the pro-monopoly precedents that billionaires procured by offering free "continuing education" antitrust training to 40% of the Federal judiciary:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/08/13/post-bork-era/#manne-down

It's amazing to see the DoJ racking up huge wins against Google's monopolistic conduct, sure, but first blood went to Epic, who won a historic victory over Google in federal court six months before the DoJ's win, which led to the court ordering Google to open up its app store:

https://www.theverge.com/policy/2024/10/7/24243316/epic-google-permanent-injunction-ruling-third-party-stores

Google's 30% App Tax is a giant drag on all kinds of sectors, as is its veto over which software Android users get to see, so Epic's win is going to dramatically alter the situation for all kinds of activities, from beleaguered indie game devs:

https://antiidlereborn.com/news/

To the entire news sector:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/06/save-news-we-must-open-app-stores

Private antitrust cases have attracted some very surprising plaintiffs, like Michael Jordan, whose long policy of apoliticism crumbled once he bought a NASCAR team and lived through the monopoly abuses of sports leagues as an owner, not a player:

https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/michael-jordan-anti-monopolist

A much weirder and more unlikely antitrust plaintiff than Michael Jordan is Google, the perennial antitrust defendant. Google has brought a complaint against Microsoft in the EU, based on Microsoft's extremely ugly monopolistic cloud business:

https://www.reuters.com/technology/google-files-complaint-eu-over-microsoft-cloud-practices-2024-09-25/

Google's choice of venue here highlights another reason to think that the antitrust surge will continue irrespective of US politics: antitrust is global. Antitrust fervor has seized governments from the UK to the EU to South Korea to Japan. All of those countries have extremely similar antitrust laws, because they all had their statute books overhauled by US technocrats as part of the Marshall Plan, so they have the same statutory tools as the American trustbusters who dismantled Standard Oil and AT&T, and who are making ready to shatter Google into several competing businesses:

https://www.theverge.com/2024/10/8/24265832/google-search-antitrust-remedies-framework-android-chrome-play

Antitrust fever has spread to Canada, Australia, and even China, where the Cyberspace Directive bans Chinese tech giants from breaking interoperability to freeze out Chinese startups. Anything that can't go on forever eventually stops, and the cost of 40 years of pro-monopoly can't be ignored. Monopolies make the whole world more brittle, even as the cost of that brittleness mounts. It's hard to pretend monopolies are fine when a single hurricane can wipe out the entire country's supply of IV fluid – again:

https://prospect.org/health/2024-10-11-cant-believe-im-writing-about-iv-fluid-again/

What's more, the conduct of global monopolists is the same in every country where they have taken hold, which means that trustbusters in the EU can use the UK Digital Markets Unit's report on the mobile app market as a roadmap for their enforcement actions against Apple:

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/63f61bc0d3bf7f62e8c34a02/Mobile_Ecosystems_Final_Report_amended_2.pdf

And then the South Korean and Japanese trustbusters can translate the court documents from the EU's enforcement action and use them to score victories over Apple in their own courts:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/10/an-injury-to-one/#is-an-injury-to-all

So on the one hand, the trustbusting wave will continue erode the foundations of global monopolies, no matter what happens after this election. But on the other hand, if Harris wins and then fires Biden's top trustbusters to appease her billionaire donors, things are going to get ugly.

A new, excellent long-form Bloomberg article by Josh Eidelson and Max Chafkin gives a sense of the battle raging just below the surface of the Democratic Power, built around a superb interview with Khan herself:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2024-10-09/lina-khan-on-a-second-ftc-term-ai-price-gouging-data-privacy

The article begins with a litany of tech billionaires who've gone an all-out, public assault on Khan's leadership – billionaires who stand to personally lose hundreds of millions of dollars from her agency's principled, vital antitrust work, but who cloak their objection to Khan in rhetoric about defending the American economy. In public, some of these billionaires are icily polite, but many of them degenerate into frothing, toddler-grade name-calling, like IAB's Barry Diller, who called her a "dope" and Musk lickspittle Jason Calacanis, who called her an all-caps COMMUNIST and a LUNATIC.

The overall vibe from these wreckers? "How dare the FTC do things?!"

And you know, they have a point. For decades, the FTC was – in the quoted words of Tim Wu – "a very hardworking agency that did nothing." This was the period when the FTC targeted low-level scammers while turning a blind eye to the monsters that were devouring the US economy. In part, that was because the FTC had been starved of budget, trapping them in a cycle of racking up easy, largely pointless "wins" against penny-ante grifters to justify their existence, but never to the extent that Congress would apportion them the funds to tackle the really serious cases (if this sounds familiar, it's also the what happened during the long period when the IRS chased middle class taxpayers over minor filing errors, while ignoring the billionaires and giant corporations that engaged in 7- and 8-figure tax scams).

But the FTC wasn't merely underfunded: it was timid. The FTC has extremely broad enforcement and rulemaking powers, which most sat dormant during the neoliberal era:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/10/the-courage-to-govern/#whos-in-charge

The Biden administration didn't merely increase the FTC's funding: in choosing Khan to helm the organization, they brought onboard a skilled technician, who was both well-versed in the extensive but unused powers of the agency and determined to use them:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/18/administrative-competence/#i-know-stuff

But Khan's didn't just rely on technical chops and resources to begin the de-olicharchification of the US economy: she built a three-legged stool, whose third leg is narrative. Khan's signature is her in-person and remote "listening tours," where workers who've been harmed by corporate power get to tell their stories. Bloomberg recounts the story of Deborah Brantley, who was sexually harassed and threatened by her bosses at Kavasutra North Palm Beach. Brantley's bosses touched her inappropriately and "joked" about drugging her and raping her so she "won’t be such a bitch and then maybe people would like you more."

When Brantley finally quit and took a job bartending at a different business, Kavasutra sued her over her noncompete clause, alleging an "irreparable injury" sustained by having one of their former employees working at another business, seeking damages and fees.

The vast majority of the 30 million American workers who labor under noncompetes are like Brantley, low-waged service workers, especially at fast-food restaurants (so Wendy's franchisees can stop minimum wage cashiers from earning $0.25/hour more flipping burgers at a nearby McDonald's). The donor-class indenturers who defend noncompetes claim that noncompetes are necessary to protect "innovative" businesses from losing their "IP." But of course, the one state where no workers are subject to noncompetes is California, which bans them outright – the state that is also home to Silicon Valley, an IP-heave industry that the same billionaires laud for its innovations.

After that listening tour, Khan's FTC banned noncompetes nationwide:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/25/capri-v-tapestry/#aiming-at-dollars-not-men

Only to have a federal judge in Texas throw out their ban, a move that will see $300b/year transfered from workers to shareholders, and block the formation of 8,500 new US businesses every year:

https://www.npr.org/2024/08/21/g-s1-18376/federal-judge-tosses-ftc-noncompetes-ban

Notwithstanding court victories like Epic v Google and DoJ v Google, America's oligarchs have the courts on their side, thanks to decades of court-packing planned by the Federalist Society and executed by Senate Republicans and Reagan, Bush I, Bush II, and Trump. Khan understands this; she told Bloomberg that she's a "close student" of the tactics Reagan used to transform American society, admiring his effectiveness while hating his results. Like other transformative presidents, good and bad, Reagan had to fight the judiciary and entrenched institutions (as did FDR and Lincoln). Erasing Reagan's legacy is a long-term project, a battle of inches that will involve mustering broad political support for the cause of a freer, more equal America.

Neither Biden nor Khan are responsible for the groundswell of US – and global – movement to euthanize our rentier overlords. This is a moment whose time has come; a fact demonstrated by the tens of thousands of working Americans who filled the FTC's noncompete docket with outraged comments. People understand that corporate looters – not "the economy" or "the forces of history" – are the reason that the businesses where they worked and shopped were destroyed by private equity goons who amassed intergenerational, dynastic fortunes by strip-mining the real economy and leaving behind rubble.

Like the billionaires publicly demanding that Harris fire Khan, private equity bosses can't stop making tone-deaf, guillotine-conjuring pronouncements about their own virtue and the righteousness of their businesses. They don't just want to destroy the world - they want to be praised for it:/p>

"Private equity’s been a great thing for America" -Stephen Pagliuca, co-chairman of Bain Capital;

"We are taught to judge the success of a society by how it deals with the least able, most vulnerable members of that society. Shouldn’t we judge a society by how they treat the most successful? Do we vilify, tax, expropriate and condemn those who have succeeded, or do we celebrate economic success as the engine that propels our society toward greater collective well-being?" -Marc Rowan, CEO of Apollo

"Achieve life-changing money and power," -Sachin Khajuria, former partner at Apollo

Meanwhile, the "buy, strip and flip" model continues to chew its way through America. When PE buys up all the treatment centers for kids with behavioral problems, they hack away at staffing and oversight, turning them into nightmares where kids are routinely abused, raped and murdered:

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/they-told-me-it-was-going-be-good-place-allega-tions-n987176

When PE buys up nursing homes, the same thing happens, with elderly residents left to sit in their own excrement and then die:

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2023/12/24/nursing-homes-private-equity-fraud-00132001

Writing in The Guardian, Alex Blasdel lays out the case for private equity as a kind of virus that infects economies, parasitically draining them of not just the capacity to provide goods and services, but also of the ability to govern themselves, as politicians and regulators are captured by the unfathomable sums that PE flushes into the political process:

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/oct/10/slash-and-burn-is-private-equity-out-of-control

Now, the average worker who's just lost their job may not understand "divi recaps" or "2-and-20" or "carried interest tax loopholes," but they do understand that something is deeply rotten in the world today.

What happens to that understanding is a matter of politics. The Republicans – firmly affiliated with, and beloved of, the wreckers – have chosen an easy path to capitalizing on the rising rage. All they need to do is convince the public that the system is irredeemably corrupt and that the government can't possibly fix anything (hence Reagan's asinine "joke": "the nine most terrifying words in the English language are: 'I'm from the Government, and I'm here to help'").

This is a very canny strategy. If you are the party of "governments are intrinsically corrupt and incompetent," then governing corruptly and incompetently proves your point. The GOP strategy is to create a nation of enraged nihilists who don't even imagine that the government could do something to hold their bosses to account – not for labor abuses, not for pollution, not for wage theft or bribery.

The fact that successive neoliberal governments – including Democratic administrations – acted time and again to bear out this hypothesis makes it easy for this kind of nihilism to take hold.

Far-right conspiracies about pharma bosses colluding with corrupt FDA officials to poison us with vaccines for profit owe their success to the lived experience of millions of Americans who lost loved ones to a conspiracy between pharma bosses and corrupt officials to poison us with opioids.

Unhinged beliefs that "they" caused the hurricanes tearing through Florida and Georgia and that Kamala Harris is capping compensation to people who lost their homes are only credible because of murderous Republican fumble during Katrina; and the larcenous collusion of Democrats to help banks steal Americans' homes during the foreclosure crisis, when Obama took Tim Geithner's advice to "foam the runway" with the mortgages of everyday Americans who'd been cheated by their banks:

https://www.salon.com/2014/05/14/this_man_made_millions_suffer_tim_geithners_sorry_legacy_on_housing/

If Harris gives in to billionaire donors and fires Khan and her fellow trustbusters, paving the way for more looting and scamming, the result will be more nihilism, which is to say, more electoral victories for the GOP. The "government can't do anything" party already exists. There are no votes to be gained by billing yourself as the "we also think governments can't do anything" party.

In other words, a world where Khan doesn't run the FTC is a world where antitrust continues to gain ground, but without taking Democrats with it. It's a world where nihilism wins.

There's factions of the Democratic Party who understand this. AOC warned party leaders that, "Anyone goes near Lina Khan and there will be an out and out brawl":

https://twitter.com/AOC/status/1844034727935988155

And Bernie Sanders called her "the best FTC Chair in modern history":

https://twitter.com/SenSanders/status/1843733298960576652

In other words: Lina Khan as a posse.

Tor Books as just published two new, free LITTLE BROTHER stories: VIGILANT, about creepy surveillance in distance education; and SPILL, about oil pipelines and indigenous landback.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/10/11/democracys-antitrust-paradox/#there-will-be-an-out-and-out-brawl