In advance of today’s antitrust hearing, some thoughts about antitrust and free speech, with links to some papers that shed light on the relationship between the two. (1/x)

It’s not a coincidence that American antitrust and American free speech have become so contested at the same time. (2/x)

The two fields have common origins, intersecting histories, and shared concerns—including, of course, a shared concern with markets, literal in one case and figurative in the other. (3/x)

The contemporary challenge to the Chicago School in antitrust law finds a mirror image in the contemporary challenge to libertarian orthodoxy in First Amendment law. (4/x)

Antitrust and free speech are linked, and they have always been linked, and they are likely to be linked in the future, too. (5/x)

We ( @knightcolumbia) hosted a symposium in November on the tech giants, monopoly power, and public discourse. (6/x) https://knightcolumbia.org/research/the-tech-giants-monopoly-power-and-public-discourse

The debate about the tech giants and monopoly power has many dimensions, in part because people approach this debate with different concerns in mind—concerns ranging from efficiency, innovation, and competition, to privacy, security, and democracy. (7/x)

At @knightcolumbia, we‘ve been particularly focused on the power that the tech giants have over public discourse. (8/x)

For people accustomed to thinking about the First Amendment, anxieties about this kind of monopoly power are natural. Justice Robert Jackson: “The very purpose of the First Amendment is to foreclose the government from assuming a guardianship of the public mind.” (9/x)

The risk we’re concerned about now, of course, isn’t that the *government* will assume this guardianship but that the *tech giants* will—or that they already have. The symposium was an effort to assess that risk, and to consider what should be done about it. (10/x)

The symposium papers approached these questions from wildly different perspectives, but collectively they provide a great entry point to this debate. (11/x)

Some of the authors explored the *mechanisms* through which the tech giants influence public discourse, and they propose measures—like system-level transparency mandates—that would expose or limit this influence. Here’s @ellgood’s excellent paper. (12/x) https://knightcolumbia.org/content/digital-fidelity-and-friction

This paper is also really super. Inspired by the history of public broadcasting, @ethanz—soon to be a visiting scholar at @knightcolumbia—argues for the development of public alternatives to private platforms. (13/x) https://knightcolumbia.org/content/the-case-for-digital-public-infrastructure

Perhaps especially relevant to the hearing today is this really thoughtful paper by @ksabeelrahman and @zephyrteachout, which maintains that the platforms should be regarded as essential public infrastructure and regulated accordingly. (14/x) https://knightcolumbia.org/content/from-private-bads-to-public-goods-adapting-public-utility-regulation-for-informational-infrastructure