Lina Khan Is Taking on the World's Biggest Tech Companies - and Losing (wsj.com) 74
Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan is taking on the world's biggest technology companies -- and losing. From a report: Khan failed Tuesday in her latest effort to block a big-tech deal when a federal judge denied her agency's bid to block Microsoft from closing its purchase of videogame publisher Activision Blizzard. The FTC suffered a similar setback earlier this year when it tried to thwart Meta Platforms' purchase of a virtual-reality gaming company. Khan, who gained prominence as a critic of Amazon, entered office in 2021 vowing to stiffen antitrust enforcement. Past enforcers were too cautious about bringing tough cases, she has said, and failed to confront the rise of companies such as Facebook owner Meta that gained monopoly-like power in digital industries, she said.
"I'm certainly not someone who thinks success is marked by a 100% court record," Khan said last year in remarks at the University of Chicago. "If you just never bring those hard cases, I think there is severe cost to that, that can lead to stagnation and stasis." Under the Biden administration, antitrust agencies have challenged more mergers than in previous years, including some that historically the government wouldn't have tried to block. Microsoft and Activision aren't head-to-head competitors, making the case against the deal less straightforward and more dependent on the FTC's prediction that the combined company would abuse its power to hurt competition in the future.
"I'm certainly not someone who thinks success is marked by a 100% court record," Khan said last year in remarks at the University of Chicago. "If you just never bring those hard cases, I think there is severe cost to that, that can lead to stagnation and stasis." Under the Biden administration, antitrust agencies have challenged more mergers than in previous years, including some that historically the government wouldn't have tried to block. Microsoft and Activision aren't head-to-head competitors, making the case against the deal less straightforward and more dependent on the FTC's prediction that the combined company would abuse its power to hurt competition in the future.
We spent 30 years packing the courts (Score:3, Insightful)
Elections have consequences. Start thinking & voting with your wallet.
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There is no unfucking a process where the Overton window defines the two alternatives, and both result in a corporatist government whose policies don't vary all that much. This is why people like me call it a uniparty.
You're misunderstanding something (Score:1, Informative)
But even with that there's no "uniparty". There are pro-consumer candidates in every democrat primary. They lose. Badly. Because nobody but old conservative voters show up for the Primary.
You could fix this in 1 cycle if you'd show up to their primary. Hardly anyone votes in it, and a 60-70% majority would be both easy and too big for the party heads (who you could replace) to side step.
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The Overton window (a term used more than it is understood) changed again without you noticing-- the 2nd party is fascist now so you have an extreme corporatist vs the old "left" corporatist.
It's not a uniparty anymore. Many republicans quit or became democrats because there is no sanity left in the grand establishment party.
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Come on man, believing that is silly. Nothing changed. They were calling Bush Hitler too. Literally nothing changed. Even the propaganda is the same.
Re:Need to unfuck the electoral process tho (Score:5, Insightful)
I mean this story in and of itself kindof cuts against that argument.
Here we have an administration who nominated and put in place an FTC chair with a publically declared anti-trust streak and has taken actions within that framework. Do we have any indication that the Republican option would have done the same or similar given another 4 years? Experience says no, not really. This is a case where there was a pretty clear difference between the two party options.
What OP is saying is that even with Khan in place there's only so much to do to overcome 30 years of precendent and judicial nominations (which to be fair it looks like the judge in this case was nominated by Biden himself)
Really this is also the downside of looking to the courts to decide these types of things when really the answer is legislation but good luck getting new antitrust legislation passed with a splt congress and a Senate filibuster in place.
Re: Need to unfuck the electoral process tho (Score:2)
This is the correct POV
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Here we have an administration who nominated and put in place an FTC chair with a publically declared anti-trust streak and has taken actions within that framework. Do we have any indication that the Republican option would have done the same or similar given another 4 years?
The Biden administration is wonderful at making a loud noise about change and then always somehow being completely ineffectual. The only thing they're better at is making up stories about how it's not their fault.
So effectively, yes, we have every indication that a Republican would have achieved as much.
Re:Need to unfuck the electoral process tho (Score:4, Insightful)
Interesting thesis;
What should they have done in this case besides taking this to court, which is what the executive branch has it's powers to do to object to this type of merger? The Biden admin or FTC annot pass laws themselves so what is their other course of action in this case?
So effectively, yes, we have every indication that a Republican would have achieved as much
Was Joseph Simons or any of Trumps picks for similar roles have such stated anti-trust opinions or took actions during the 4 years they had in office? What about Bush Jr? Reagan?
I can admit that Clinton and Obama really also let mergers happen without much fuss so having someone like Khan as head of FTC is actually a change of pace for that department.
Elections do in fact matter even if we don't get every single thing that we want.
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You're arguing noise. I'm saying there's no signal.
Carry on.
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If you're convinced enough there is no signal then you're not really looking for it either.
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Gross over simplification:
There is a difference between TRYING and defending the status quo. Functionally, the result is the same but that does not make all the action or inaction equivalent.
This is why we can't have progress; people who can't see the difference between Martin Luther King and George Wallace. Or they are skeptical about everybody making an effort to change things. The thing about change is once it happens it also proves it CAN happen so you can use that as a reason to revert if the results
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"Really this is also the downside of looking to the courts to decide these types of things when really the answer is legislation"
And that's the issue here. It's not the job of the Court to legislate no matter how much activists want it too. Khan may have been put in place by the Administration, but she wants to do things that Congress has not said she can. The same people complaining about the courts stopping her, are the same people that yelled about Trump being a Fascist dictator anytime his administra
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Pretty hard to vote pro-consumer when none of the available candidates actually represent that standpoint.
The election system is pretty fucked at this point. A defacto two-party system, which hand selects their candidates and has recently decided to unburden itself from any debates that may shine badly upon the anointed. Ranked voting might help us find a way out of political hell, but getting that passed is pretty difficult when both parties know that it is kryptonite to the status quo.
The fact people still believe there are two parties is kinda laughable to me at this point. While there may be some differences in the public persona the party members show us, from the somewhat less shrill shrieking on the "left" (center) to the way more shrill shrieking on the right (batshit level far right), the voting records are pretty lock-step over the things that really matter. Though truth be told, there's always the wedge issues and the publicly flogged moral panic bullshit where the parties can p
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counter-example: the Supreme Court. No question which are Rs and which are Ds.
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While it is true that economically, they are similar in being pro-corporate, they're radically different in other ways such as caring for democracy, where one party cares much more about power and is willing to spend years bitching that the elections are unfair. Peoples rights over their bodies, one party is usually at the forefront of removing various rights about what people do with their bodies, whether self medicating or evicting an unwanted.
And even economically, there is usually one party that is real
There's been on in the Dem primary (Score:1)
If everyone who bitched about the system showed up for the Dem's primary we'd be in year 2 of President Sander's second term and be well into the New New Deal.
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If everyone who bitched about the system showed up for the Dem's primary we'd be in year 2 of President Sander's second term and be well into the New New Deal.
One of the problems there is that you assume that I'm a Democrat. I'm not allowed to vote in primaries for parties that I'm not registered under.
No pro consumer candidates available? (Score:2)
Are you saying that your party has no pro-consumer candidates?
If not maybe you have a suggestion for those in your party who may be similarly interested in voting for someone who represents the interests of the vast majority of Americans?
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Re:We spent 30 years packing the courts (Score:4, Informative)
they literally just bought Bethesda and made their big titles exclusives making it painfully obvious they'll abuse their market dominance.
What dominance? MS has been an also-ran for years in console gaming. And as far as exclusives, schoolyard bully Sony has done plenty of their own. As was revealed during the court proceedings, the future of Call of Duty on Xbox was in jeopardy. Effectively, the FTC was being used by Sony to stop one of their competitors to maintain their own market dominance.
you're literally making the point (Score:1)
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As in, if the FTC did not bring their case then Sony would lose their market dominance to Microsoft as a result of Microsoft buying up the most important software supplier to Sony.
Except, no. The judge ruled that wouldn't happen, that Sony's market dominance is likely to survive even if they did lose Call of Duty, and that there was no evidence shown that Microsoft would pull Call of Duty from PlayStation platforms, while evidence for why they'd keep doing PlayStation releases was provided.
There's good reason to want Microsoft to be able to better compete against Sony in the "console wars." Sony has been able to maintain their market dominance despite heavy supply chain issues. Even
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You are literally saying that the FTC's case was sound.
Errr no. The FTC does not exist to protect a company's market dominance. In fact it is literally the opposite.
Live via zealots, die via zealots (Score:3, Interesting)
The plutocrats manipulated religious zealots to gain power, but are finding the zealots are gradually turning on them, like the Disney content battles, sports and entertainment venues having to do deal with restroom wanker cops (NBA changing all-star location), and employees who don't want to work where their bodies are regulated (Musk's engineers).
They created the Frankengelical monster but can't kill it now.
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religious zealots manipulated plutocrats
FTFY
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Not as much, most know better, but badly want their tax breaks.
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You do realize that the judge that ruled on this was a Biden appointee, right?
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You do realize that the judge that ruled on this was a Biden appointee, right?
Don't let facts get in the way of the discussion. Unarticulated tangential feelings and impassioned grunts for the win.
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Despite the fact that they literally just bought Bethesda and made their big titles exclusives making it painfully obvious they'll abuse their market dominance.
Remind me again which console you have to own if you wanna play that new Zelda game that is all the rage? Exclusives are just business as usual in the gaming industry, and someone else summed it up nicely in a comment the other day: evil corp. allowed to merge with more evil corp.
The Sprint/T-Mobile merger mattered. This merger, however, is a nothingburger.
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You mean we've been putting judges in place that follow the law?
If you want different policy, you need a different Congress that passes actual legislation that puts forth the policy you desire. Khan is failing because she's an activist that doesn't realize the limits of her powers bestowed on her office by Congress. She's not a dictator that can just say 'I hate big tech' and go forth and punish. The courts do not exist to make decisions based on a political ideology. They exist to make decisions based
Question (Score:5, Insightful)
Does the Microsoft/Activision merger benefit consumers any?
Will it lead to increased competition in the market? No.
Will it lead to lower prices in the market? No.
The only people to benefit from this are the suits.
A bigger question (Score:4, Insightful)
Will it matter?
Look at the track record of large mergers and acquisitions in the games industry. Usually company A is trying to acquire a successful franchise from company B. The buy the IP, and, often, a bunch of developers leave company B to start another company. Company A then runs company B in to the ground, as the important part isn't the IP, it's the developers whom made the IP.
There are exceptions, but it's generally the case.
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This is an $80,000,000,000 dollar company not one company buying some random studio and losing a few developers that start a new company. It likely has strategic importance and judging from what they are buying, it's probably a bet that the future of military is intersecting with games, much like predicted by science fiction like Ender's game.
Re:A bigger question (Score:4, Interesting)
Attempts to militarize gaming technology are uniform (ha) failures. I've been a military contractor working in communications and electronics for the last 25 years. I've watched initiative after initiative crash into the rocks. The two mindsets are completely alien to each other. Getting people who work in FAANG companies - or Microsoft to talk to actual soldiers is laughable. And smaller firms don't have the technology you are talking about, or the gravitas to get their way with the military.
I'll give a brief example. It occurred to someone that Microsoft's edge stacks - with a local implementation of Azure - would be great stuff for forward deployed units. The demand from the MSFT side (and in essence the hardware provider) was that only their staff handle basic maintenance, like replacing drives. This then breaks on the rocks of "who is going to go to Kabul or whatever other shithole we happen to be operating in to replace this hardware". Then, the military's clear reluctance to be dependent on a commercial entity for the actual logistics of fighting a war. They'll hire consultants to consult and train their people, but not to be dependent upon, even though an honest conversation with officers will result in them admitting they _are_ utterly dependent on the external support. They have to pretend otherwise for leadership consumption.
Another example is the Google rebellion over sharing AI with the DoD. Are they really going to get in bed with organizations that would do that with them? Fuck no.
Lastly, the people that work in those companies have no relationship to military imperatives of mission, 24x7 operations regardless of circumstance, that kind of thing. Two different languages. The problem has gotten _worse_ rather than better over time. Embedding say, MSFT people in with a unit does bridge the gap a little, but only a little.
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Attempts to militarize gaming technology are uniform (ha) failures.
I don't believe that's quite true. IIRC, multiple militaries utilize a version of DCS World built for that purpose and the US military has utilized the Arma games and their predecessors (or customized versions) for various training purposes.
There is also the near certainty that within the next few decades, a lot of manned aircraft are going to be remote piloted drones, or human directed AI controlled packs of drones, and at that point I would say that "militarizing gaming technology" would become almost ne
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Only the last one has merit. The training software has nothing to do with operations and isn't taken seriously by soldiers themselves.
The last one...maybe. I think the real problem with remotely piloted drones is the lag time on the comm links. Keep that in mind, and remotely piloted drones are very limited, actually. I think the operations of same are going to have to change because of that kind of logistics and it won't be from some rear echelon center, and all the considerations I bring to attention
I don't disagree (Score:3)
But the case they brought to court was a shit case. I'd have dismissed it myself.
There was ample material to construct a much stronger one.
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Not everything is about "would it benefit consumers?", the road to hell is paved that way. Some of it is following laws and not infringing rights. Does *everything* YOU do benefit the world and consumers? When government gets obsessed with "maximize consumer benefit", they go down dark paths. Are there things you could give up so that the homeless rate can be reduced?
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Does *everything* YOU do benefit the world and consumers? When government gets obsessed with "maximize consumer benefit", they go down dark paths. Are there things you could give up so that the homeless rate can be reduced?
I am not a mega corporation. Anything I do will not make a blip on any bottom line. One of the world's largest software companies and one the world's largest gaming companies on the other hand can have a huge impact. The entire point of the FTC is to protect consumers. It's literally their slogan.
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Sorry, I think you might have transcribed the second sentence too quickly from your party's handbook. Can you double check it's word-for-word correct?
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Not everything is about "would it benefit consumers?", the road to hell is paved that way. Some of it is following laws and not infringing rights. Does *everything* YOU do benefit the world and consumers? When government gets obsessed with "maximize consumer benefit", they go down dark paths. Are there things you could give up so that the homeless rate can be reduced?
Yes, there are things I'd give up to help the homeless. Time volunteering, money when I have spare to charities that seem to actually give a damn, and selling off unneeded items to have more money to give to those charities just to name a small few things I've actually done.
To the larger point, "would it benefit consumers" is the road to hell? Is it more or less of a road to hell than the current government take, where everything is literally about maximizing corporate profits, citizens be damned. Maybe an
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Antitrust jurisprudence these days is entirely about "consumer welfare". This is due to the decades-long dominance of the so-called "Chicago School [antitrustlawsource.com]" legal theory on antitrust. In short: unless you can prove that something resulted in higher prices for consumers, or some other easily quantifiable harm, then anything goes. This is partly why enforcement actions against, say, Facebook or Google are so difficult. Their price to consumers is zero, and it
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Probably not but we have a decades long precedent of a pretty hands off protocol in regards to M&A for a long while now.
Just look at the escalation in the amount and size since 1980:
List of largest mergers and acquisitions [wikipedia.org]
The executive and Judicial branches by design can only do so much here. Legislation is required to change this direction.
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Does the Microsoft/Activision merger benefit consumers any?
Will it lead to increased competition in the market? No. Will it lead to lower prices in the market? No.
The only people to benefit from this are the suits.
Fortunately government doesn't get to control our lives by deciding what it thinks is best for any number of various parties, individuals, or corporations. They get to intervene when someone claims they have been harmed, a contract has been violated, or property has been damaged. But fuckwits like you keep voting to control and harm other people out of vengeance...so here we are. I give exactly zero shits if Microsoft and Activision merge--or if Microsoft does something you think is "evil" (like maybe st
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Fortunately government doesn't get to control our lives by deciding what it thinks is best for any number of various parties, individuals, or corporations.
The government already controls your life in countless ways. The zoning for your property, the insurance you must carry on your vehicle, how fast you can drive said vehicle, the safety features the manufacturer is required to install in your vehicle, the codes your home is built to, the amount of nicotine in the cigarettes you smoke, what drugs you are allowed to purchase, the food storage temperatures at the store you buy groceries. Need me to go on?
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"Fortunately government doesn't get to control our lives by deciding what it thinks is best for any number of various parties" like abortion for instance.
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Please look up the term "prior restraint" and "preliminary injunction", then come back to the conversation. Governments and the courts intervene all the time to prevent harms from happening, not only after when bad things happen.
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Suits are people too...I think.
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Does the Microsoft/Activision merger benefit consumers any?
That is a pointless question with no legal basis at all. Consumer benefit is never considered in mergers. Consumer harm is, and the FTC failed to prove harm, incidentally their main reasoning was directly addressed by Microsoft.
judge was appointed by biden (Score:1, Troll)
This judge was appointed by Biden, as part of HIS attempt to pack the courts. Even she (the judge) is not rabid enough to agree with Lina Khan. That should tell you something about Lina Khan.
In addition this was the near monopolist, Sony, trying to hold on to their near-monopoly, not anything like what Khan was claiming, as best I can tell.
Khan is anti-capitalism. Her modus operandi is simply to make life as difficult as possible for large corporations. Nothing more.
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Khan is anti-capitalism. Her modus operandi is simply to make life as difficult as possible for large corporations. Nothing more.
You say that like it's a bad thing.
The FTC didn’t lose the lawsuit. (Score:5, Informative)
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but the lawsuit can still proceed absent the injunction.
This isn't as insignificant as you think. The injunction was to prevent a merger. Once a merger has occurred even if the FTC prevails the resulting unravelling of companies can be a significant headache.
An interesting regulatory philosophy (Score:1)
From the WSJ article: “I’m certainly not someone who thinks success is marked by a 100% court record,” Khan said last year in remarks at the University of Chicago. “If you just never bring those hard cases, I think there is severe cost to that, that can lead to stagnation and stasis.”
The idea that regulators should be in the business of expanding the law through litigation is one that I think is Flat Wrong. It might not cost the taxpayers anything, but responding to failed re
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But only bringing to court cases that have a 100% chance of success is allowing the scope of law to shrink since you're only enforcing part of the law.
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With respect, you and I clearly have different perspectives on the law and the role of the courts in interpreting law (versus making the law.)
Matt Stoller on the recent decision (Score:2)
It was a bad argument (Score:2)
As for the FTC as a whole in their crusade against big tech, they should persue issues that would lead to actual problems and make arguments as such, not just chase every possible issue that involves large companies.
She picked the wrong fight (Score:2)