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kyburgElizabeth Warren’s Plan to Break Up Big Tech Is Extremely Aggressive. Good.:
seandotpolitics:
On Friday morning, on Medium, the blogging platform of choice for all presidential candidates, Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren debuted a plan to “break up Big Tech.” Silicon Valley, she writes, has “too much power — too much power over our economy, our society, and our democracy.” The problem? Not enough competition. Taking a page from the “hipster antitrust” movement, Warren bemoans the “weak antitrust enforcement” that’s allowed tech megaplatforms to accumulate power without having “to compete as aggressively in key areas like protecting our privacy.”
But she’s got a plan to change all that. Warren’s proposal centers around what she believes have been two major obstacles to healthy market competition in Silicon Valley: (1) that mergers like Facebook’s acquisition of Instagram in 2012 have limited competition in the tech industry; and (2) that platforms that own “proprietary marketplaces,” like Amazon or the App Store, can also participate in those marketplaces, giving them intense competitive advantages.
To combat the first, Warren would appoint regulators charged with “reversing illegal and anti-competitive tech mergers” (and, no doubt, preventing new ones). To address the second, Warren would propose legislation that would designate tech platforms with a total global annual revenue of $90 million or more as “platform utilities,” subject to specific regulations. Once they reached revenues of $25 billion or more, they would no longer be able to participate in the marketplaces they own. (For example, Amazon would be obligated to spin off Amazon Basics.)
It’s an aggressive proposal, to say the least, and the first of its kind in the presidential race.
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seandotpolitics:
On Friday morning, on Medium, the blogging platform of choice for all presidential candidates, Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren debuted a plan to “break up Big Tech.” Silicon Valley, she writes, has “too much power — too much power over our economy, our society, and our democracy.” The problem? Not enough competition. Taking a page from the “hipster antitrust” movement, Warren bemoans the “weak antitrust enforcement” that’s allowed tech megaplatforms to accumulate power without having “to compete as aggressively in key areas like protecting our privacy.”
But she’s got a plan to change all that. Warren’s proposal centers around what she believes have been two major obstacles to healthy market competition in Silicon Valley: (1) that mergers like Facebook’s acquisition of Instagram in 2012 have limited competition in the tech industry; and (2) that platforms that own “proprietary marketplaces,” like Amazon or the App Store, can also participate in those marketplaces, giving them intense competitive advantages.
To combat the first, Warren would appoint regulators charged with “reversing illegal and anti-competitive tech mergers” (and, no doubt, preventing new ones). To address the second, Warren would propose legislation that would designate tech platforms with a total global annual revenue of $90 million or more as “platform utilities,” subject to specific regulations. Once they reached revenues of $25 billion or more, they would no longer be able to participate in the marketplaces they own. (For example, Amazon would be obligated to spin off Amazon Basics.)
It’s an aggressive proposal, to say the least, and the first of its kind in the presidential race.
https://ift.tt/eA8V8J
from Tumblr http://bit.ly/2IOrO8t
via IFTTT
