Anti-trust

Opinion | The Monopolization of America (Published 2018)

In one industry after another, big companies have become more dominant over the past 15 years, new data show.

Integration and Monopoly

Apple has won through integration, but integration combined with network effects and economies of scale can result in bad outcomes that look a lot like monopolies.

Everything is Changing; So Should Antitrust

WPP is dealing with not only a changing advertising industry but a changing world, thanks to the Internet. Antitrust needs to change as well.

Platform Monopolies - AVC

There’s an article in the NY Times Sunday Business Section today that lays out a very important question we have all been dancing around but will increasingly be dealing with. The article is nominally about Amazon’s fight with Hachette but it is really about internet platforms and monopolies. The author of the NY Times piece […]

Public Monopolies Are a Good Thing

Private monopolies are rightly criticized for being inefficient and unaccountable. But public monopolies are a different story — we should loudly and proudly say that democratically controlled public monopolies are a positive good.

White Paper — the FIRST PERSON NETWORK

Part Seven: The four trust network effects in a two-sided market for trust.

The Game of Oligarchy | Brewster Kahle's Blog

I just invented and played a game today with my family, and it worked great– it was fun and we learned an important lesson. Similar to the game “Monopoly” which shows that one person ends up monopolizing even though you think the rules are “fair,” the game of Oligarchy shows that the “free market” leads inexorably to one person getting all the money and everyone else going broke. And fast.

Pluralistic: All (antitrust) politics are local (02 Sep 2025) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow

The US government has abandoned antitrust. Today, companies facing antitrust jeopardy can just pay key Trumpland figures a million bucks, and they will make a discreet visit to the fifth floor of the DoJ building, have a little shoofty around the Antitrust Division and the whole thing will just…go away:

Trust and Faith in Our Web

I’m not Brennan, but I’m very interested in decentralization and a fan of AtProto specifically, so I’d like to weigh in. First I should mention I’ve personally never been able to get into microblogging, so I haven’t touched bluesky myself, despite having an account for ATProto reasons. But I agree it’s concerning that the company chooses to continue to host the content of harmful individuals and calling that act “neutral”. I’m certainly against the idea of the “marketplace of ideas” as it’s cle...

Pluralistic: The worst possible antitrust outcome (03 Sep 2025) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow

Last year, Google lost an antitrust case to Biden's DoJ. The DoJ lawyers beat Google like a drum, proving beyond a shadow of a doubt that Google had deliberately sought to create and maintain a monopoly over search, and that they'd used that monopoly to make search materially worse, while locking competitors out of the market.

Open Up Vs Break Up - AVC

There have been many calls to break up the large Internet monopolies; Amazon, Google, Facebook, Apple, etc. Breaking up a large monopoly feels like a very 19th/20th century move to me. I would prefer that politicians and policy makers think about opening up as the better intervention. A good way to explain this is to […]

Proprietary Software Giants Telling Us That “Open Source Has Won” Means That “Open Source” is Just Proprietary Software Giants

Don't fall for the deceitful illusion that monopolies hijacking what they've dubbed the

The Moat or the Commons — Warman Notes

American capital financed AI on the assumption it would be the next great monopoly. Open-weight models are commoditizing the capability that monopoly was supposed to protect. The collision between the two now defines the direction of the U.S. AI industry — and the country.

On Politics and Proton - a message from Andy

1.1K votes, 1K comments. Hi all, last night, a post from end of last year from my personal X account about antitrust policy in the US suddenly became…

How Big Tech Becomes Ungovernable

Big Tech companies like Google, SpaceX, and Meta aren't just monopolies—they're becoming ungovernable through tech extensivity. Why €4B in fines went uncollected.