A Big-Picture View of the Antitrust Debate

In this month’s issue of Reason magazine, I have a feature-length article on the bipartisan push to revive antitrust enforcement. If you don’t have the print edition, it is now online. Here is the introduction:

Mark Zuckerberg was having one of 2020’s worst Zoom meetings. It was July 29, and one of the most influential men in the world was sitting, pale and perspiring, in a sparse white room getting attacked by members of Congress from both parties. Rep. Matt Gaetz, a Florida Republican and close ally of President Donald Trump, was scolding the Facebook CEO about the “content moderators that you employ [who] are out there disadvantaging conservative content.”

But before Zuckerberg could offer much in the way of a response, he was attacked from the left, as Rhode Island Democrat Rep. David Cicilline castigated Zuckerberg for not taking down the same content. For Cicilline, “the problem is Facebook is profiting off and amplifying disinformation that harms others because it’s profitable.”

For good measure, Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner, a Wisconsin Republican, asked Zuckerberg why Facebook temporarily took down Donald Trump Jr.’s account over a post promoting hydroxychloroquine as a COVID-19 treatment. Zuckerberg pointed out that the incident happened on Twitter.

After discussing how conservatives’ and progressives’ ideological priors are warping the antitrust debate, I point to a better way: abolish antitrust regulation outright, or at the very least, require proof of consumer harm before unleashing it.

Read the whole thing here. See also CEI’s dedicated antitrust site, antitrust.cei.org.