Trust Busting The Search Bar
October 22, 2020
The Good News
- This Texas farm connects special-needs kids with injured animals: ‘They’re just like me’ (WaPo, $). A second chance on the ranch.
- Operation Chinchilla is a go: The $400,000 Rescue Mission to Save 25 Chinchillas (Atlantic, $)
“Anyone that has a monopoly will pretend that they’re in incredible competition.” — Peter Thiel
“Before the monopoly should be permitted, there must be reason to believe it will do some good – for society, and not just for monopoly holders.” — Lawrence Lessig
Trust-Busting The Search Bar
(Spencer Platt via Getty Images)
The end of the nineteenth century in America was an era of ‘trusts’ and ‘combinations’ of businesses and capital organized and directed to control the free market by restraining trade and suppressing competition. At the time there were few statutory laws addressing the issue, but the term ‘restraint of trade’ had a well-understood meaning under common law.
In 1890, Congress passed the Sherman Antitrust Act, the first federal legislation aimed at prohibiting non-competitive agreements and unilateral conduct that monopolizes or attempts to monopolize the market to the public’s detriment. The Act incorporated common law concepts like the duty of care, meaning a company has a duty to anticipate adverse effects of its actions and to mitigate them, and the duty to deal, meaning the provider of an essential service has the responsibility to provide impartial access to that activity. The Act authorizes the Department of Justice to bring suits to prohibit the conduct that is allegedly violating the Act; it also authorizes private parties injured by such ‘restraint of trade’ to bring suits for three times as much money in damages as the alleged violation cost them.
The industrial era managed to produce unrivaled innovation and prosperity while being governed by these common law concepts. But the internet era has seen digital company giants — Big Tech — make their own rules, arguing that government oversight would spoil the magic of their innovation.
In 2019, the scrutiny surrounding giant technology companies like Google, Apple, Facebook, and Twitter became a growing issue. Earlier in October, after a 16-month investigation of US Big Tech firms, the House Judiciary Antitrust Subcommittee issued its 451-page report enumerating the dubious and harmful practices of the dominant digital companies and proposing the reinvigoration of the antitrust laws. The report concludes that Congress should seriously consider forcibly breaking up the largest tech companies right now.
On the heels of the report’s release, the Department of Justice filed its first major antitrust case in two decades against a Big Tech firm — Google. Similarly, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is reportedly not far behind with its own antitrust action against Facebook.
But herein lies a word of caution: While such concentrated monopoly power is what the antitrust laws were created to prevent, antitrust lawsuits are reliably lengthy proceedings with uncertain outcomes. Even if antitrust enforcement results in structural reform of the marketplace, it doesn’t establish broad behavioral expectations in that marketplace. Breaking a big company into smaller parts doesn’t ensure against smaller companies developing their own abusive behaviors. Antitrust cannot reach consumer-protection issues such as forced consent to the use of your personal information, or require that consumers receive basic information about how their personal data is being used. Most important, antitrust decisions do not have the flexibility to respond to companies’ ever-changing use of ever-evolving technology. What is needed is the ability to establish industry-wide behavioral rules in addition to antitrust enforcement.
Pope Provides Hope To LGBTQ Community
- In a major departure from Vatican doctrine, Pope Francis called for the passage of civil union laws for same-sex couples in a documentary that aired in Rome on Wednesday. The pontiff said “Homosexuals have a right to be part of the family,” in the film about his life entitled “Francisco.” “They’re children of God and have a right to a family. Nobody should be thrown out, or be made miserable because of it,” he added.
- Francis had endorsed civil unions for gay couples, as an alternative to same-sex marriages, while serving as archbishop of Buenos Aires; this was his first public pronouncement as pope in favor of civil unions. Catholic teaching holds that gays must be treated with dignity and respect but that homosexual acts are “intrinsically disordered.” Francis’ comments were welcomed by the president and CEO of the LGBTQ media advocacy organization GLAAD.
- “This news should send an undeniable message to Catholic families with LGBTQ people that all family members are deserving of acceptance and support,” she said in a statement. However, the conservative bishop of Providence, Rhode Island immediately called for clarification. “The pope’s statement clearly contradicts what has been the long-standing teaching of the church about same-sex unions,” he said. “The church cannot support the acceptance of objectively immoral relationships.” (NBC News)
Canada Reels From Fishing Violence
- Tensions are escalating between commercial fishermen and Canada’s indigenous people in the battle over Nova Scotia’s lucrative lobster industry. Indigenous lobstermen say they are being attacked with impunity for exercising their legal right to hunt and fish, as guaranteed them in a 1752 treaty and backed by a 1999 Supreme Court decision.
- Commercial fishermen say the native fishermen are threatening their livelihoods by trapping lobsters outside the federally regulated lobster season. The conflict turned violent last month after the Sipekne’katik First Nation opened its own fishery enterprise and began fishing lobster outside of the federal season, which takes place from November 30 to May 31. An indigenous fisherman’s boat and a lobster plant were burned up; another fisherman was harassed and his entire catch stolen.
- Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has made reconciling with Canada’s Indigenous community a priority of his premiership, acknowledging in 2018 the nation’s past “humiliation, neglect and abuse” of the country’s 1.4 million Indigenous people. The recent violence in Nova Scotia has now become a national political issue, with leaders of the opposition parties criticizing the government’s response. (NYT)
Additional World News
- A bold idea from the Boston Globe: Just give poor people money (Boston Globe)
- Everywhere basic income has been tried, in one map (Vox)
- SARS Wars: Nigerian forces killed 12 peaceful protesters, Amnesty says & Nigeria Sars protest: Unrest in Lagos after shooting (AP, BBC)
- Facebook and Instagram Are Censoring Protests Against Police Violence in Nigeria (Vice)
- Anglo American sued over alleged mass lead poisoning of children in Zambia (Guardian)
- How Trump’s Sudan gambit could backfire (WaPo). Was this really a rare win in Africa?
- Trump administration notifies Congress of $1.8B in proposed weapons sales to Taiwan (CNN)
- Patrolling the Pacific: Cat and mouse on the high seas: on the trail of China’s vast squid fleet (Guardian)
- Trump Records Shed New Light on Chinese Business Pursuits (NYT, $)
- Hack with a vengeance: FBI says Iran and Russia have US voter information (BBC)
- Brexit: Trade talks are back on – but what’s changed? (BBC)
- Chile braces for constitutional referendum in the wake of violent clashes (WaPo, $)
COVID-19
- COVID-19 Death Rates Are Going Down, And Not Just Among The Young And Healthy (NPR)
- AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine trial Brazil volunteer dies, trial to continue (Reuters)
- What a Successful Vaccine Trial Looks Like (Atlantic, $)
- A Viral Theory Cited by Health Officials Draws Fire From Scientists (NYT)
- It’s Time to Talk About Covid-19 and Surfaces Again (Wired)
Children Abandoned At The Border
(Joe Raedle via Getty Images)
- In a filing Tuesday from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), lawyers appointed by a federal judge to identify migrant families who were separated by the Trump administration said they have not been able to track down the parents of 545 children, and that about two-thirds of the parents had been deported to Central America without their children.
- The Trump administration instituted a “zero tolerance” policy in 2018 that separated migrant children and parents at the southern US border. The administration later confirmed it had actually begun separating families in 2017 along some parts of the border under a pilot program. The ACLU and other pro-bono law firms were tasked with finding the members of families separated during the pilot program.
- Unlike the 2,800 families separated under zero tolerance in 2018, most of whom remained in custody when the policy was ended by executive order, many of the more than 1,000 parents separated from their children under the pilot program had already been deported before a California federal judge ordered that they be found. (NBC News)
Begging For Barr
- President Trump has been blatantly trying to pin some kind of manufactured corruption on his rival Joe Biden throughout the 2020 presidential campaign. Now the president has displayed his utter panic by going on Fox & Friends and calling on Attorney General Bill Barr to launch some sort of investigation into his latest pseudo-scandal involving Biden and son Hunter’s laptop that Trump and his propagandists have been hyping of late.
- When asked about the possibility of a special prosecutor being appointed to investigate — whatever? — the president’s desperation became apparent for all to see when he cried out: “We’ve gotta get the attorney general to act. And he’s gotta act fast. He’s gotta appoint somebody. This is major corruption and this has to be known about before the election.”
- Several previous efforts by Trump to use the government to shore up his flailing campaign have backfired, but he continues his shameless scheming. National poll averages put Biden up by double digits over Trump, so we surely haven’t seen the last of the president’s brazen plots to grab another term by any unscrupulous means possible. (WaPo)
Additional USA News
- Historian Timothy Snyder warns that America is already in its own “slow-motion Reichstag Fire” (Salon)
- The Kremlin computer? Hunter Biden story is Russian disinfo, dozens of former intel officials say (Politico)
- Is the Trump Campaign Colluding With Russia Again? (NYT, $)
- Electoral college explained: how Biden faces an uphill battle in the US election (Guardian)
- How Trump plowed through $1 billion, losing cash advantage (AP)
- Even the WSJ: Biden Will Make America Lead Again (WSJ)
- The Constitution Is the Crisis (New Republic)
- Cornel West: ‘George Floyd’s public lynching pulled the cover off who we really are’ (Guardian)
- The hidden King in Queens: An NYC Enclave Where Trump Flags Fly (NYT, $)
- Rudy Giuliani caught in compromising position in new ‘Borat’ film (NBC)
- How Mark Zuckerberg Learned Politics (WSJ)
A Medical Mystery In Michigan
- Timesha Beauchamp was born with cerebral palsy. On August 23, the family of the 20-year-old called 911 for help at their home in Southfield, Michigan because Timesha was having trouble breathing. Four paramedics responded and spent 30 minutes trying to revive the young woman, but she showed no signs of life. The paramedics then called an emergency room physician who pronounced Timesha dead based on information provided over the phone.
- Afterwards Timesha was taken to a funeral home, where an employee preparing to embalm her body discovered that her eyes were open and she was breathing. Timesha was then transported to a hospital and put on a ventilator. For the next eight weeks, she remained in a coma at the Children’s Hospital of Michigan in Detroit, before being pronounced dead for a second time on Sunday. The family’s lawyer said their daughter had died as a result of “hypoxic brain damage,” which happens when the brain is deprived of oxygen. The lawyer added that the young woman was oxygen-deprived for four hours before getting to a hospital.
- The licenses of the four paramedics, two firefighters and two emergency medical technicians were suspended by the State of Michigan, and they were placed on paid administrative leave by the city of Southfield. The Oakland County Medical Control Authority and the city are conducting an investigation. And while it will not bring their daughter back, Timesha’s devastated family is suing the city and the four paramedics for $50 million. (NYT)
Additional Reads
- Barbara Kruger Offers a Dark Mirror for Our Meme-Driven Age (NYT, $). Everything is not as it memes.
- Companies Are Rushing to Use AI—but Few See a Payoff (Wired)
- Taking Back Our Privacy (New Yorker, $)
- Astronomers caught a black hole slurping up a star like spaghetti (PopSci). You can’t see pasta the event horizon.
- What Sharks Can Teach Us About Survivorship Bias (FS)
- Life (and Death) Without God (NYT, $)
- Black Artists Built the Music Industry. It’s Time They Got Their Dues (Vice). Is it time to change our tune?
- Rats! How Chicago became the most vermin-infested town in the US (Guardian)
- Very nice! Borat 2 review: ‘Fascinating and urgently satirical’ (BBC)