"As they exist today, Apple, Amazon, Google, and Facebook each possess significant market power over large swaths of our economy. In recent years, each company has expanded and exploited their power of the marketplace in anticompetitive ways," Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) and antitrust subcommittee Chairman David Cicilline (D-R.I.) said in a joint statement. "Our investigation leaves no doubt that there is a clear and compelling need for Congress and the antitrust enforcement agencies to take action that restores competition, improves innovation, and safeguards our democracy."
Nadler and Cicilline understand the issues. According to the report,
Companies that once were scrappy, underdog startups that challenged the status quo have become the kinds of monopolies we last saw in the era of oil barons and railroad tycoons. […] the dominance of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google has come at a price. These firms typically run the marketplace while 7also competing in it — a position that enables them to write one set of rules for others, while they play by another, or to engage in a form of their own private quasi-regulation that is unaccountable to anyone but themselves.
Their recommendations include mandating interoperability in social media, something I have long advocated:
Interoperability
Interoperability is fundamental to the open internet. It is present in email, which is an open interoperable protocol for communicating online regardless of a person’s email service or the type of device they use to send the email.
An interoperability requirement would allow competing social networking platforms to interconnect with dominant firms to ensure that users can communicate across services. Foremost, interoperability “breaks the power of network effects” by allowing new entrants to take advantage of existing network effects “at the level of the market, not the level of the company.” It would also lower switching costs for users by ensuring that they do not lose access to their network as a result of switching.
Federating social media services with ActivityPub to form a Fediverse — that’s the way to go.
Big Tech should be split up, says report
Big Tech should be split up, says report
Big Tech should be split up, says report
In the US House of Representatives, people are wising up to Big Tech monopolies:
Nadler and Cicilline understand the issues. According to the report,
Their recommendations include mandating interoperability in social media, something I have long advocated:
Federating social media services with ActivityPub to form a Fediverse — that’s the way to go.