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Senate Confirms Progressive Tech Critic Lina Khan To Become an FTC Commissioner (cnbc.com) 122

The Senate confirmed President Joe Biden's nominee to the Federal Trade Commission, Lina Khan, the young progressive who helped launch a reckoning amongst antitrust scholars and enforcers, in a 69-28 vote. From a report: At 32, Khan will become the youngest commissioner ever confirmed to the agency. Her confirmation also signals a bipartisan desire to impose more regulations on Big Tech companies like Facebook, Amazon, Alphabet and Apple. Khan received the support of several Republicans, including Commerce Committee Ranking Member Roger Wicker, R-Miss., who participated in her confirmation hearing. Still, others like Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, the top Republican on the Senate Judiciary subcommittee on antitrust, opposed her confirmation. Lee has tended to be cautious about certain types of regulation despite concerns about tech companies' influence and previously expressed apprehension about Khan's experience.

Khan became a well-known figure in antitrust circles after writing "Amazon's Antitrust Paradox" for the Yale Law Review in 2017, while a student at the university. The paper made the case for using a different framework for evaluating competitive harm than the popular consumer welfare standard. That standard essentially says that antitrust law violations can be determined based on harm to consumers, which is often measured based on prices. But Khan argued that standard could miss significant competitive harm in the modern economy, such as predatory pricing that lowers consumer prices in the short term but allows a company that can afford it to quickly gain market share. She also argued that both owning and selling on a marketplace, like Amazon does, could allow a business to exploit information across their ecosystem to undercut the competition.
Update: Biden Names Lina Khan, a Big-Tech Critic, as F.T.C. Chair.
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Senate Confirms Progressive Tech Critic Lina Khan To Become an FTC Commissioner

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  • ok (Score:5, Insightful)

    by GoTeam ( 5042081 ) on Tuesday June 15, 2021 @02:02PM (#61490570)
    Like with all government employees, hope for the best and expect the worst.
  • Grist (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 15, 2021 @02:03PM (#61490576)
    • What a piece of shit that paper is. First, there is no antitrust doctrine against non-monopolies/trusts using "predatory pricing" to _become_ a monopoly or dominant player. The idea is nonsensical. You would look at "predatory pricing" on an existing monopoly, not on some company looking to grow who isn't currently a monopoly. Now, 4 years later, it would certainly be viable to look if Amazon is using pricing power to drive out competitors. In 2017? No.

      Second, they didn't discover some amazing loophole abou

      • by jbengt ( 874751 )

        Second, they didn't discover some amazing loophole about looking at pricing only as a measure of consumer harm. This is an established part of determining a monopoly - fucking pricing power. Everybody already knew this.

        The Reagan administration made a change in anti-trust enforcement that for some reason has stuck around since. They de-emphasized the harm to competition and began requiring evidence that the monopoly harmed consumers. Unsurprisingly, it's more difficult to prosecute monopolies under those

        • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

          The reason to worry about lack of competition is to look out for the consumers. What is the point of exercising government control over a company if it will make no difference to the consumers? It's just spending government and company resources for no real gain. It's a waste of time and money.

      • by LKM ( 227954 )
        I'm not sure if it is correct to say that there are countless alternatives to Facebook and Amazon.

        Facebook's issue is the network effect. Technically, there are services that offer similar features to Facebook, but I can't use them, because it's pointless to be the only person I know on that service.

        Amazon's issue is that there are a lot of products that I need, and that I can only buy from Amazon. Some ebooks and Audiobooks are only available on Amazon, for example. Even when I find them on a different
    • Applying common carrier obligations to any organization who hosts more than 20% of the third parties in their marketplace makes sense to me. Breaking up the organization, externally limiting vertical integration, and rate setting all feel like mistakes. Part of what I think makes these dominant businesses great is that they are managed by leaders who are strongly focused on doing the best job for the customer (as opposed to maximizing earnings for the next quarter, which seems to be the focus of the busin
  • The only things the two parties seem to agree on these days are new ways to screw the public harder. Usually that means new ways to keep incumbents in office, but I was originally quite suspicious in this case until I realized she wasn't actually a bipartisan pick. These days "bipartisan" has been insanely redefined to mean that at least one politician from the other party didn't go berserk on the issue.

    But now I'm suspicious that even a few of the so-called Republicans voted for her.

    By the way, I tried to read her major piece on Amazon, but the formatting of the Yale website makes it quite difficult to read. For my weak eyes it was close enough to unreadable that I'll wait for her book.

    • by LKM ( 227954 )
      In the current political climate, "bipartisan" is a meaningless term if it is defined by "supported from politicians of both parties-" A better definition would be "supported by a reasonable percentage of voters from both parties."
      • by shanen ( 462549 )

        Basically the ACK, but the overwhelming evidence is that today's politicians would be hard pressed to care less about the voters' opinions. That's the natural effect (or perhaps the point?) of picking the voters first (through gerrymandering and selective disenfranchisement).

        (But why didn't Slashdot notify me of your reply?)

      • by GlennC ( 96879 )

        A better definition would be "supported by a reasonable percentage of ownership of both subsidiaries of the Party."

        FTFY

  • Because as they get older, they learn it doesn't work.

  • She also argued that both owning and selling on a marketplace, like Amazon does, could allow a business to exploit information across their ecosystem to undercut the competition.

    This is how more and more supermarkets are operating. Big popular brand of locally produced foodstuff "A" gets strong-armed into becoming a producer of a white label version of the product "a" that the supermarket sells under a generic or home brand. As consumers split into two camps who buy A or a based on either perceived quality

  • Well this seems to be a paid move by Microsoft. The monopoly on the desktop in corporate america gets to run free while all the competitors they have are getting kicked in the junk.... Why?
  • . . . monopolies and duopolies in regional broadband markets continue to plague the United States with no end in sight. Is that more an issue for the FCC? I'm not so sure. Business is business, and the FTC can get their hands dirty with broadband providers strangling competition and offering dated/slow service to customers for top dollar.

    Also if Khan wants to make an issue out of "owning and selling in a marketplace", perhaps she should be looking at the way streaming services are owned, operated, and pop

  • Big tech monopolies can quite properly be said to have gotten Biden elected.

    Biden and the Democrats love having big tech monopolies to do their censorship and propaganda for them.

  • Someone had to say it.
  • Let's see who wins the arms race to buy her off.

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