There is a strand of thought that ties the problems of online speech and digital media to the market dominance of, e.g., Facebook, and recasts them as antitrust issues. While I think there is some nexus there, I worry it has confused a lot of people... (1/x)

Whether or not the online speech problems are wholly or partly an antitrust problem, there are also real antitrust issues with the largest tech companies that have little to do with questions of hate speech, misinformation, sensationalism, “breaking our democracy,” etc. (2)

Setting aside FB for the sake of clarity: Amazon, Apple, and Google have all built dominant platforms of different kinds, which now play host to thriving online economies. Owning those platforms gives them huge power over the shape of those economies. (3)

With both control of those economies and privileged access to their workings, these platforms have a golden opportunity to join the economy they created, and compete within it. Inevitably, the quest for growth drives them to do so. (4)

Without stronger antitrust regulation of platforms, their owners will always have incentive to dip into and siphon off for themselves the most profitable elements of the economies they control. (5)

This caps the potential of any independent company that builds on them, because if they succeed past a certain point, the platform owner will notice and build a rival product that enjoys home-field advantage. (6)

Think about how Apple TV+ exists natively on iOS versus the Netflix app, which doesn’t allow signups without the user independently navigating to an outside website. Or Apple Music and Spotify. I wrote about the Apple-specific platform problems here: https://onezero.medium.com/apples-secret-monopoly-5718272c16a5 (7)

I am not an expert in antitrust law but it’s plain to see that this is anticompetitive and antithetical to fair and open markets. And the more of the economy moves online, the more essential these platforms become. The pandemic has accelerated both. (8)

So, completely laying aside the *also-very-important* issues of how online platforms shape the flow of information, the question of how they shape the future of the online economy—and, by extension, the economy as a whole—is extremely consequential in itself. (9/9)

Hey cool @dlberes turned this thread into a little postie. Who says blogging is dead?! https://twitter.com/ozm/status/1288527015314956291