If You’re Worried About Lina Khan, Then Support Specific Authority Bills

While many FTC Chairmen have been restrained in their approach to using the FTC’s authority, current Chair Lina Khan, a noted anti-tech hawk, has not. Khan’s FTC is in the avant garde on many legal theories regarding competition, antitrust, and consumer protection. Chair Khan has pressed ahead with regulatory gusto by challenging the orthodoxy of how the FTC pursues enforcement actions and the orthodoxy on whether it should conduct rulemakings.

And therein lies the rub for some. There are those that argue bills, like OAMA or KOSA, endow the FTC with authority it doesn’t currently have.

So, do bills like OAMA or KOSA actually expand the FTC’s authority? Or, by crafting specific remedies to specific legislative problems, would they instead constrain the FTC’s general authority? I explore these questions in this essay.

VP Vance Is Bad News for Big Tech Monopolies

The Biden administration has been hawkish when it comes to Big Tech. For instance, the Justice Department has carried on Trump’s Google Search antitrust case. Better yet, the administration is pursuing even more antitrust actions—one against Google for its monopolization of the ad tech market and another Apple for its monopolization of mobile apps. Both are based on probes initiated under Trump. What’s more, the Federal Trade Commission under Lina Khan’s leadership has brought a slew of antitrust cases against Meta and Amazon. Khan has even referred a case against TikTok for violating a settlement, the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, and the FTC Act.

The prospect of passing the baton to a second Trump administration had Big Tech supporters (and libertarian groups) hopeful that the change in administration would lead to a pro-business milieu. However, President Trump’s Truth Social post announcing Vance as his running mate might as well be their elegy.

Bridging the Digital Divide with LEO Satellites

DPI Summer Fellow Sarah Thacker writes in Broadband Breakfast:

“The digital divide is a pressing matter that affects almost 15 million Americans and disproportionately impacts rural populations across the country.

“Thanks to the advent of Low Earth Orbit satellites, we may have a market solution to address this lapse in access. At the outset, satellites have demonstrated that they can provide broadband to rural areas where other means, such as cable or fiber optics, are impractical due to remote locations and difficult terrain. LEO satellites operate in a revolving network and utilize spectrum, which is the proverbial fuel for mobile devices comprised of radio waves and microwaves, to provide coverage and connectivity with high-speed and low latency because of their low orbit.

“Think of all those new applications with the promise of LEOs. For farmers, it could reduce unnecessary energy usage and overuse of resources such as pesticides and fertilizers because networks will be able to offload data from sensors more efficiently. Additionally, real-time data and information can boost yields due to a more precise prediction of the harvest window. These technological advancements provided by LEO satellite broadband can generate a more sustainable and cost-effective agriculture industry.”

Enlist App Stores to Protect Kids

Americans want to protect children from harmful social-media and internet content, but how? Several state bills that have sought to do so have hit a legal wall. The First Amendment generally allows for child-protection measures only as long as they don’t infringe on adults’ free speech. That raises a difficult question: How do social-media platforms determine a user’s age?

What’s the solution? . . . On iPhones and iPads parents can “set age-related content restrictions for those applications, filter online content, and control privacy settings.”

These parental controls could be taken a step further to prevent children from gaining access to harmful and addictive products in the Apple and Google app stores. We already do this in brick-and-mortar shops. When someone tries to buy cigarettes, alcohol or pornography, the cashier must check the shopper’s ID. We hold the store liable when children improperly purchase those products.

Antitrust in the Digital Age

Silicon Valley giants have caught the ire of our primary antitrust enforcers, including the Department of Justice (DOJ), state attorneys general, and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). Although the DOJ and the FTC seem to be addressing the same issue—growing concentration in tech markets—they have taken two very different approaches. The DOJ leverages more traditional and straightforward legal theories—such as a focus on consumer welfare, market efficiencies, and price—to make its cases against Google and Apple. The FTC, by contrast, is challenging those very theories; it has taken its position among the avant-garde of legal theorists who aim to refocus antitrust enforcement to promote competitors.

DPI & Partners Push KOSA

DPI delivered a letter to the Energy and Commerce Committee supporting the Kids Online Safety Act, which would provide the necessary tools to addressing raising children in the digital age. Co-signatories included the NAACP, the Institute for Family Studies, Angel AI, the National Center on Sexual Exploitation, American Principles Project, and Parents for Safe Online Spaces.

Not Only ‘Khanservatives’ Want Strong Antitrust Enforcement

The Biden administration has made antitrust enforcement a priority. It has brought actions against large airline companies like Jet Blue and, yes, numerous cases against Big Tech. Many of the Biden administration’s antitrust efforts have been met with strong conservative support. So much so that it inspired the Wall Street Journal to introduce a new term into the antitrust nomenclature: “Khanservatives.”

The ascription refers to conservatives who support Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Chair Lina Khan’s relentless pursuit to revert antitrust enforcement to a more trust-busting style. Libertarian Big Tech advocates use the term “Khanservative” as an epithet to treat all conservative support for antitrust enforcement as unprincipled.

That view is categorically wrong.

Republicans have a long tradition of pushing back on concentrated authorities. President Theodore Roosevelt sought to break up monopolies. President Ronald Reagan’s Department of Justice broke up AT&T’s monopoly over interstate telecommunications networks. Judge Robert Bork supported the Justice Department’s antitrust suit against Microsoft in the 1990s. And the Trump administration initiated antitrust probes into Apple and Google.

DPI Statement at Net Neutrality Roundtable

DPI President participated in FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez’s roundtable on net neutrality today. As he put it:

“The FCC is ill-equipped to shepherd in the promise of net neutrality given all of its legal constraints. If we are going to have another net neutrality debate, then the FCC is an inappropriate venue for it because it cannot use a holistic approach to ensure that all market participants in the internet stack are following the same rules. Only Congress can create a net neutrality framework that applies to the full stack so that whether a company offers internet access, provides cloud storage and processing, hosts an app-store, or manages an operating system, it cannot block or throttle the lawful content you want to access.”