This ⬇️ is the project that Meta created and funded to advance app store legislation to: 
- Hurt its rivals Google and Apple;
- Shift liability from itself to app stores; &
- Move from defense to offense

That's also why it hates @JakeAuch's POPA bill...

https://x.com/DigiChildAllnce/status/1998425562394825150

...Because it puts responsibility back on them.

But unlike Meta's bill, POPA respects minors' privacy, covers virtual reality and the open web, and is bipartisan.
https://x.com/RepAuchincloss/status/1998562266351026387


It's a real upside-down moment when Republicans are siding with Pornhub. But they like @JohnJamesMI' ASAA bill too.


Meta's App Store Legislation

MY LATEST: @superwuster and @doctorow's new books claim to defend consumers -- but they're really looking down on them.

They treat people like NPCs: Non-Player Consumers.  

Passive, duped victims of Big Tech.

That says more about Wu & Doctorow than it does about tech.


Wu and Doctorow see themselves as speaking up for people against elites.

But their disdain for consumers' agency and judgment couldn't be more elite.

Tech consumers aren’t NPCs. They’re informed, adaptive, and vocal.  

Link:
https://progresschamber.org/insights/tim-wu-cory-doctorows-non-player-consumers/


Response to Wu & Doctorow

One of the things I hear a lot from tech co's is that they don't love everything Trump is doing, but they genuinely appreciate that they can get a meeting w/ his staff.

In contast, Biden's WH ended up adopting @SenWarren's view that Dems should never meet with companies.

This was a huge mistake, which deprived the Biden admin of connections to, and intel from, the US economy's most important companies.

It happened b/c Biden's senior staff didn't send a clear signal to talk with industry.

My colleague @DaveV15 with more:
https://pub.bluehorizonproject.org/p/warren-scared-biden-tech-meeting?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=6389484&post_id=178029470&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=edys4&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

Tech Companies' Political Meetings

A masks-off moment for the "anti-monopolists" when they side with Hollywood studio monopoly rights over fair use -- a pro-competition legal principle that helps AI startups compete vs incumbents.  

Weaken fair use and you only entrench Big Tech 🤷‍♂️

https://x.com/ddayen/status/1984253880713335003

Dayen's article is the perfect encapsulation of how the "anti-monopolists" are really just "anti-big tech", and how they will reject pro-competition principles in order to stick it to Google and Meta.

https://prospect.org/2025/10/31/progressive-tech-group-asks-trump-to-block-ai-copyright-cases/

And of course, we didn't ask Trump to "block" lawsuits - he can't do that.  But the Administration can file amicus briefs to express its view - just like the Biden DOJ in the Epic v. Apple antitrust case.


It's silly to me that Dayen says we're a "front" group.  Since I founded the group in 2021 we have listed our corporate partners on our website.  

Wow, a real gotcha there.

https://x.com/ddayen/status/1984253883032731976

Anti-Monopolists vs. Fair Use

Cory Doctorow's @doctorow"Enshittification" really ought to have been called "Ensheepification."  

It claims to be pro-consumer, but in truth it perpetuates an elite view of consumers as mindless sheep incapable of judging quality/value for themselves.

https://x.com/linamkhan/status/1975603688090837001

In Doctorow's world, consumers aren't choosy - they're fools.  They stand by idly while services and products get worse, without pursuing alternatives.  

If they still like the service, they're "prisoners of neoliberal mind palace."

https://x.com/doctorow/status/1975583780971712535

220M people worldwide belong to Amazon Prime, but Doctorow can't imagine that people actually value the service.  In his view, all it sells is "low-quality, high-priced junk."

Apparently those 220M people are mindless idiots, incapable of assessing the true value of Prime.


And Doctorow's "policy solutions" are all deeply anti-consumer ideas that would raise prices for consumers, and force Amazon packages to be delivered less slowly.

That would all make Amazon's alleged "enshittification" worse!

In Doctorow's world, an unhappy Amazon user is incapable of shopping at Target or Walmart.

An unhappy Google search is incapable of using ChatGPT.

And yet, Doctorow himself promotes decentralized alternatives to Twitter...

https://x.com/doctorow/status/1975587639928455580

It's no wonder that the anti-corporate populist crowd love "Enshittification."  

It endorses their world view that consumers are ignorant and unable to choose alternatives, and that technology markets are static with no new entrants or innovation.

https://x.com/ChopraUSA/status/1975900575083712806

The most galling thing about this "movement" is that it claims to speak for consumers when it's actually disdainful of consumers' choices.  

Because millions of consumers are choosing "obviously" awful co's like Amazon & Google, consumers must be clueless!

Ivory tower populism.

Ensheepification vs. Consumer Empowerment

NYT's @JuliaAngwin has a new piece out on the Google search case, long on Google panic and short on facts and reality.  

A few things that jumped out...

🧵

1. Angwin worries that the remedy opens door for the Trump Admin to start pressuring Google on search results.   

But Trump has already been doing that, just like Biden Admin did before him.  But the technical cmte Trump's DOJ was seeking in the G case would have gone further!


I wrote about this in @Newsweek: if you don't want Trump overseeing Google's search results (and I don't), be glad Judge Mehta rejected the DOJ's proposed technical committee that would have done exactly that:
 
https://www.newsweek.com/trump-bending-institutions-his-will-now-he-wants-control-googles-search-results-opinion-2086396

2. Angwin: "Even the best AI models can't compete without regular access to Google's search index."

Tell that to OpenAI, Meta (Llama), and Anthropic.  AI models are a lot more complicated than just access to a web search index.  And 

The LLM Leaderboard ranking the quality of LLMs doesn't even put Google's Gemini in the top 10!

https://artificialanalysis.ai/leaderboards/models

3. Angwin: Courts should break up Google bc Trump is trying to censor speech

Reality: DOJ antitrust head Gail Slater argued that Google should be broken up *because* she didn't like the way it had allegedly censored conservatives!

Of course, the case was never *about* speech

4. We need new rival search engines - for shopping, scholarly papers, and custom news search

I suggest Angwin check out:
Shopping → Amazon
Scholarly papers → JSTOR, SSRN
Custom news search → ChatGPT

This all exists already.

5. Congress should impose mandatory data sharing b/c Google is too vulnerable to govt's whims.

Does Angwin really believe smaller companies are *more* likely to withstand Trump pressure?  

Angwin developed an acute case of Google Derangement Syndrome years ago, which looks increasingly out of touch with the competitive Internet of today as well as the AI revolution.  This op-ed reads like something from ten years ago - not at all relevant today.

Response to Julia Angwin NYT on Google Case

Takeaways on the Google search antitrust remedies:

1.  Longtime Google haters wanted Judge Mehta to throw the book at Google.  But he was mindful of the precedent from the Microsoft case.

🧵

https://x.com/nytimes/status/1962982232013906263

In rejecting Google critics' fantastical remedies, his ruling today cited the MSFT precedent nine different times: Remedies must be “tailored to fit the wrong creating the occasion for the remedy.”


That led him to reject a slew of far-reaching proposals, including: 
- the breakup of Google
- divestiture of Chrome and Android
- a proposed campaign by Google to educate consumers on alternative search engines
- sharing of user queries/clicks
- remedies for website publishers.


2. Mehta spent 29 pages of his ruling discussing how competitive the AI space has become, and how that threatens traditional search engines.  

It’s a reminder of how competitive innovation is a hare to antitrust law's tortoise.

https://x.com/Sherman1890/status/1962976869915267579

3. Biggest thing here is Google being forced to hand over its search index to help rival search engines.  

Google must share a list of "ingredients"(search index), not "recipes" (how they rank based on it).  

And it excludes the Knowledge Graph and sponsored shopping results.


4. Google can’t do exclusive search distribution deals, but it can still pay for non-exclusive deals.  

Google will have to adopt a ballot screen on Chrome and its own hardware, and can incentivize its partners to do the same.

5. The original liability finding will be appealed, and it’s likely that these remedies will also be put on hold until those appeals are exhausted.  

So Google is unlikely to be required to adopt these changes soon - and maybe never, if it wins its appeal.

Google Antitrust Ruling

Lina Khan (@linamkhan) just got asked the $64,000 question by @SohrabAhmari :

If post-neoliberalism was what working class voters wanted, why did Trump stomp Harris among the working class?

Of course, Khan can't admit that the whole theory was flawed.

Then she goes on to say that voters were focused on cost of living (true).  And that was only due to corporate price gouging, which she was working on.

But as @mattyglesias has noted, Khan's ZIRP-era antitrust claim to fame was that some things mattered more than low prices!

It wasn't that Bidenomics or anti-corporate populism failed, Khan says.  It's that they needed more time to unwind neoliberalism.

The self-delusion runs deep.  

This was a political and policy dead-end that Dems need to chuck for good.

Link:
https://unherd.com/2025/08/lina-khan-woke-and-anti-woke-serve-big-business/?lang=us

Debating Post-Neoliberalism

A federal judge is about to hand down "remedies" in Google's big search antitrust trial. 

Google could be forced to:
- Sell Chrome
- Share search data with rivals
- Stop paying for distribution deals
- Let Trump Admin oversee search

Here are a few key things to watch for:

🧵


1. Search data sharing

Millions of Americans use and love Google search.  Forcing Google to share its search data and recipes with its competitors - as DOJ has proposed - would destroy G's motivation to make search better for consumers.  

Search quality goes ⬇️

Imagine that your neighborhood bakery comes up with an amazing new donut-muffin hybrid: the monut.

It's such a hit, they have lines out the door.

And then the govt makes them share the recipe with other bakeries.

The bakery is going to stop trying to invent new treats.

Then there's the privacy concerns.

People share their darkest secrets with Google.  How the govt going to ensure that people's privacy is protected when their search data gets shared?

The remedy is great for G's rivals, but lousy for Google users.

2. Browser quality and competition.

The DOJ wants Google to divest Chrome.  But Chrome wasn't even part of the original case.  It was never about "self-preferencing."  If Judge Mehta embraces such a disconnected remedy, it raises the odds that he gets slapped down by appeals ct.

And if Mehta stops Google from bidding on search distribution deals like with Firefox, the main victim of that is probably Firefox - because they can no longer benefit from a bidding war between Google and Bing.

That would likely mean one fewer browser competitor.

3. AI mission creep.

The DOJ's original case barely mentioned AI.  But since winning the liability phase, DOJ has thrown "remedy spaghetti" against the wall, including limits on Google's future innovation in AI.

But AI is a space w/ even more competition than search!


DOJ also sought to forbid Google from making AI-related investments, like the one Google did in Anthropic.

Limiting those investments would on reduce competition in AI - as Anthropic testified.

4. Trump Search Commission

DOJ has asked Judge Mehta to allow a "technical committee" made up of Trump Admin choices, to oversee Google's search algorithms and content policies.

That would put Trump in charge of Google search results.

As I wrote in @Newsweek ⬇️ it's easy to see where this road leads.

Just look at how Trump ousted the Kennedy Center board over a drag show.

Imagine Googling "Donald Trump" and seeing only glowing coverage.

https://x.com/adamkovac/status/1935336709908217974

Our @vidushi_law attended the trial, and called the DOJ's theory "trickle down competition":

Bulldoze Google’s most popular products today, hand the blueprints to its rivals, and hope the benefits of competition eventually “trickle down” to consumers.

https://progresschamber.org/insights/trump-admin-trickle-down-competition-plan-against-google/

Whatever Judge Mehta decides, his remedies will likely be paused pending Google's appeal of the original liability verdict.  The appeals courts reversed the remedies in the Microsoft antitrust case for being overbroad.  The same thing could happen here if Mehta overshoots.

Google Antitrust Trial Outcome

Tim Wu (@superwuster) has a new NYT on the forthcoming Google search antitrust remedies ruling.  

There are 5 things wrong with his claims.

🧵

1. The case wasn't about competition in AI. 

The DOJ's initial case against Google mentioned AI just once.  Tim and others have wishcast this case into being "about AI" - but that's not the case DOJ filed.  And doing a far-reaching remedy on AI risks an appeals court slapdown.

2. It wasn't the trial hindering Google in AI.  It was Big Company Syndrome.

Tim argues that the "trial was the remedy" by constraining G from doing AI distribution deals.  But Google initially lost its AI edge to ChatGPT,not due to $ deals but internal bureaucracy and slowness.

2. Divesting Chrome has zero connection to the DOJ's original case.

If DOJ believed Chrome gave G an unfair advantage in search, it should have brought a self-preferencing case.  It didn't.  Tim's claim otherwise is revisionist wishcasting.

4. Consumers get a worse Google if G is forced to share with rivals.

Undoubtedly, Google being forced to share its search data would be great for G's rivals.  But imagine that an award-winning bakery was forced to share its cupcake recipe w/ rivals.  They would stop innovating.

5. I commented here about Tim's metric for whether Google is pro-competitive.  By his standard, sure seems like it!

https://x.com/adamkovac/status/1960388039403778559

Tim's full piece here:
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/26/opinion/google-antitrust-remedy-ai.html