> "proposed consent decree would prevent the merged company from boycotting platforms because of their political content by refusing to place their clients' advertisements on them, according to two people briefed on the matter."
Isn't this literally covered by the first amendment ?
> "If advertisers get into a back room and agree, 'We aren't going to put our stuff next to this guy or woman or his or her ideas,' that is a form of concerted refusal to deal,"
This is an incredible stretch to claim, first you would have to prove that if the other company changed their political views that you would still refuse to deal.
Even from the FTC itself its explained that this "Refusal to deal" is centered to prevent monotpolizations.
> the focus is on how the refusal to deal helps the monopolist maintain its monopoly, or allows the monopolist to use its monopoly in one market to attempt to monopolize another market.
If there is any kind of concern about content monopoly, they shouldn't grant the merger, period, it seems to me. Singling out political content is where their discussions seem questionable from my perspective. Otherwise the tacit argument is "content monopoly is ok unless it is political in nature" which seems somewhat arbitrary and very much about the government restricting speech, as it is of a specific nature being targeted.
> The FTC website says that any individual company acting on its own may "refuse to do business with another firm, but an agreement among competitors not to do business with targeted individuals or businesses may be an illegal boycott, especially if the group of competitors working together has market power.
This is actually reasonable. Any one company can refuse to do business but can’t coordinate with competitors
I suppose it might be difficult to prove that the companies deliberately coordinated with each other to not do business with someone, vs. that they each independently decided that the person broke their rules and to ban them separately.
I thought we were broadly in favor of free markets, which definitionally includes business spending. What happened to allowing mergers that merely made things better for the consumers?
This is very obvious cronyism, in support of Elon.
Mergers don't make things better for consumers once the pressure of price point competition is removed from the market, which includes any incentive to innovate as well.
The only "consumers" helped by an M&A are investors and execs.
Next + Apple. Without the merger they would have both been out of business
YouTube could not have survived without the Google merger.
Sprint was losing money for over a decade and wouldn’t have survived without merging with T-mobile and T-mobile needed the spectrum to compete with AT&T and Verizon.
The article explicitly said that one company can boycott but multiple companies can’t work together to boycott. Even the most ardent free market believers agree that collusion should be illegal.
> "proposed consent decree would prevent the merged company from boycotting platforms because of their political content by refusing to place their clients' advertisements on them, according to two people briefed on the matter."
Isn't this literally covered by the first amendment ?
> "If advertisers get into a back room and agree, 'We aren't going to put our stuff next to this guy or woman or his or her ideas,' that is a form of concerted refusal to deal,"
This is an incredible stretch to claim, first you would have to prove that if the other company changed their political views that you would still refuse to deal.
Even from the FTC itself its explained that this "Refusal to deal" is centered to prevent monotpolizations.
> the focus is on how the refusal to deal helps the monopolist maintain its monopoly, or allows the monopolist to use its monopoly in one market to attempt to monopolize another market.
https://www.ftc.gov/advice-guidance/competition-guidance/gui...
What this WILL do will give the administration another tool to harass companies who vote with their wallet.
Mergers can distort competitive market functioning and conditions on them to ensure market operations are common.
So if a merger could create an excessive distortion in the advertizing space, this could be rational.
This is not imaginary as we have seen these collective boycotts happen before.
But why political content in particular?
If there is any kind of concern about content monopoly, they shouldn't grant the merger, period, it seems to me. Singling out political content is where their discussions seem questionable from my perspective. Otherwise the tacit argument is "content monopoly is ok unless it is political in nature" which seems somewhat arbitrary and very much about the government restricting speech, as it is of a specific nature being targeted.
From the article
> The FTC website says that any individual company acting on its own may "refuse to do business with another firm, but an agreement among competitors not to do business with targeted individuals or businesses may be an illegal boycott, especially if the group of competitors working together has market power.
This is actually reasonable. Any one company can refuse to do business but can’t coordinate with competitors
I suppose it might be difficult to prove that the companies deliberately coordinated with each other to not do business with someone, vs. that they each independently decided that the person broke their rules and to ban them separately.
I thought we were broadly in favor of free markets, which definitionally includes business spending. What happened to allowing mergers that merely made things better for the consumers?
This is very obvious cronyism, in support of Elon.
Minihands is fairly obviously disinterested in free markets; it's all about patronage with him.
Mergers don't make things better for consumers once the pressure of price point competition is removed from the market, which includes any incentive to innovate as well.
The only "consumers" helped by an M&A are investors and execs.
Next + Apple. Without the merger they would have both been out of business
YouTube could not have survived without the Google merger.
Sprint was losing money for over a decade and wouldn’t have survived without merging with T-mobile and T-mobile needed the spectrum to compete with AT&T and Verizon.
The article explicitly said that one company can boycott but multiple companies can’t work together to boycott. Even the most ardent free market believers agree that collusion should be illegal.
Same dilemma as in housing discrimination: how can you tell if it's collusion, or choice?
Housing discrimination is scientifically easy to study. Have the same profile but different names and pictures.
Who is “we”? The American right is largely a kleptocrat/fascist party now.