[HN Gopher] FTC Chair Lina Khan on AI regulation, startup acquis...
___________________________________________________________________
FTC Chair Lina Khan on AI regulation, startup acquisitions, and
more [audio]
Author : todsacerdoti
Score : 65 points
Date : 2023-11-07 18:01 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.ycombinator.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.ycombinator.com)
| jakobson14 wrote:
| Would love to see some shit that stops FAANG/M$ from pulling a
| daiper.com on startups, but I'm not holding my breath. What
| regulation could they possibly propose that would have teeth
| against companies with that much time and money?
| bogwog wrote:
| Break them up. All you gotta do is ask!
| https://twitter.com/MActon93/status/1712622995355861448
| teaearlgraycold wrote:
| Break 'em up and shut 'em down!
| sremani wrote:
| I do not know why she gets so much fan fare for a single paper on
| Amazon. Her entire tenure was nothing consequential about Anti-
| trust. She was supposed to be queen of Trust-busting.
|
| Just co-opt the lingo of a movement and forward your career. A
| walking talking self-promotion shop.
| arrosenberg wrote:
| Can you be more specific? Otherwise this comes off as
| reactionary. Most of her term has been about laying the
| foundations to do antitrust again, since it has been declining
| since the 60s and dead since Bush settled the MSFT case. It
| might take a decade to get a big win on breaking up a giant, so
| it's good that she has already started.
| WillPostForFood wrote:
| She has made some attempts, like Microsoft and Activision
| Blizzard, but they seem to have been poorly thought out and
| poorly executed.
| megaman821 wrote:
| Sometimes a philosophy can lead to odd conclusions, but
| instead of questioning that philosophy people lean into it.
|
| Microsoft is a bigger company than Sony, so they get framed
| as the baddie. Argue that the merger may hurt Sony, even
| though Sony has much more market share in console gaming.
| What is a court supposed to do with that when they are
| expecting to hear something about consumer harm?
| stale2002 wrote:
| To be more specific, pretty much ever anti trust case that
| she has done has failed.
|
| She talks big talk, and yet has zero results.
|
| Her arguments in court are also bad.
|
| The best example of her failure was the blizzard acquisition
| where she spent most of her time talking about Sony, and not
| consumer welfare.
| arrosenberg wrote:
| > The best example of her failure was the blizzard
| acquisition where she spent most of her time talking about
| Sony, and not consumer welfare.
|
| That's what I mean though - the consumer welfare standard
| is terrible and essentially designed to kill antitrust
| enforcement in the US. It takes time to change the tide -
| the consumer welfare standard took 20 years to become fully
| accepted as the proper standard for enforcement (or non-
| enforcement, as it were). She needs to keep banging the
| drum for competitive markets - it's not sufficient for
| Microsoft to promise to not act anticompetitively - they
| should not be allowed to have that power at all. "Consumer
| welfare" (whatever that actually means in this case) is
| irrelevant.
|
| The above standard also has the benefit of being
| enforceable, unlike the current, nebulous standard that is
| too easy to satisfy.
| stale2002 wrote:
| > The above standard also has the benefit of being
| enforceable, unlike the current, nebulous standard that
| is too easy to satisfy.
|
| Making bad arguments in court isn't the way to make
| effective anti-trust change.
|
| You can't just will your ideas into existence. Either
| make a new law, or make arguments in court that will
| actually work.
|
| Or I guess keep wasting time, not being effective. Thats
| what she's chosen I guess.
|
| > "Consumer welfare" (whatever that actually means in
| this case)
|
| Its actually very well defined by the courts. It has been
| the fundamental basis for anti-trust law for decades.
|
| Its mostly about whatever causes lower prices.
|
| The fact that it is well defined, I think is part of the
| reason why some people don't like it. Because they can't
| get around the very straightforward measurement of if
| prices are going down or not.
| arrosenberg wrote:
| > You can't just will your ideas into existence. Either
| make a new law, or make arguments in court that will
| actually work.
|
| Robert Bork would be shocked to hear you say that. Show
| me the act of Congress that established the consumer
| welfare standard.
|
| Its not hard to imagine that arguing "market
| concentration is bad as a rule" will eventually find a
| friendly judge if you try a few times. The laws, as
| written, support that very line of argument.
|
| > The fact that it is well defined, I think is part of
| the reason why some people don't like it. Because they
| can't get around the very straightforward measurement of
| if prices are going down or not.
|
| Some people don't like it because the math very rarely
| works as described, acquiring companies often lie, and we
| have ample proof that it has substantially increased
| market concentration, avoiding which is entire point of
| antitrust laws.
| KRAKRISMOTT wrote:
| She is overly obsessed with big tech when there are much more
| insidious anti-trust cases like banking, media, and broadband
| infrastructure. She only goes after what is hot and
| politically popular (exactly like a lot of founders). Big
| tech is now the easy punching bag because they made
| newspapers lose money and politicians blame them for the
| whole Biden/Trump/Clinton election issue. They are a good
| distraction from the more entrenched interests. If I were a
| lobbyist for Goldman/AT&T, there is no better candidate than
| her.
|
| Her appointment in this case is politically charged. People
| don't usually go straight from academia to one of the highest
| seats in the executive unless they are put there by the
| incumbent administration to be an attack dog/push a very
| specific view of the world. She gives off opportunistic
| "during a gold rush, sell shovels" vibes, just on the
| regulatory side.
| gamblor956 wrote:
| There are hundreds of banks, and no bank has a monopoly on
| customers. If you mean credit card processing, that's a
| very different thing (and is one of the areas the FTC is
| already looking at...).
|
| Broadband infrastructure monopolies (and their
| predecessors, the telephone and utility monopolies) have
| passed court muster for decades because the primary moat is
| the intense capital requirements to enter the industry, not
| the minimal anticompetitive behavior the utilities engage
| in once they've established themselves. To put it bluntly:
| even Google, at its zenith, failed in this market because
| it wasn't willing to put in the capital necessary to
| properly compete. The newest competitors, like Starry, and
| SpaceX Starlink, have each spent billions on infrastructure
| to acquire single-digit percentages of the market.
|
| _People don 't usually go straight from academia to one of
| the highest seats in the executive_
|
| The FTC is not one of the highest seats in the
| executive...Not even close. Even the lowly Secretary of
| Veterans Affairs, considered a throwaway position, is a
| higher executive seat than the FTC. The FTC has been
| regarded as a toothless agency for decades; if anything,
| appointing an inexperienced academic is proof of its
| _lowly_ regard.
| SpaceManNabs wrote:
| So I had no idea who she was and looked up her background....
|
| She seems wildly inexperienced.... Clearly smart and motivated,
| but wildly out of her depth. No wonder they failed to prevent
| the Microsoft + Activision Blizzard merger. Lawyers with
| decades of experience on her ran around her in circles
|
| How did she get that job? Who did she know? Was she set up to
| fail? What the actual hell is this?
|
| I am incredibly disappointed in this corrupt bs. Like this
| can't be all just because she wrote that thesis on Amazon. No
| way that justifies her position.
|
| I don't care about her ideological positions or wtv, but has
| she actually succeeded in any anti trust case? I have been rage
| clicking through her history, and while her academic record is
| impressive, I see nothing successful during her tenure at the
| ftc.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _seems wildly inexperienced_
|
| The real what the fuck moment, for me, was when Khan did "not
| even provide an estimated actual figure or range for
| Facebook's market share at any point over the past ten years"
| [1].
|
| That's the judge! In his opinion! How do you claim monopoly
| without bothering to calculate market share!
|
| [1] https://casetext.com/case/fed-trade-commn-v-facebook-
| inc#p4
| SpaceManNabs wrote:
| I have been rage researching her all day, and I can
| understand why sentiment within the FTC lawyers is so low
| right now lol. BS like this might actually turn me into a
| Republican because at least the federalist society puts up
| ideological morons that get the job done.
| thisgoesnowhere wrote:
| I think it's interesting to say she is out of her depth? What
| would you prefer?
| SpaceManNabs wrote:
| Someone with at least a decade of experience in non-
| academic law. Or at least 5....
|
| I am all about academics. I think intelligentsia is
| undervalued in America. But not all skills in academia
| transfer to industry/gov, and you need new ones too that
| can only be built with experience. She is people's boss
| ffs. Would you want your boss in government to be someone
| that has never had a leadership position in government????
| gamblor956 wrote:
| _How did she get that job?_
|
| She wrote a paper that provides a new legal basis for
| antitrust enforcement in the U.S. that allows for different
| theories from the currently prevailing "consumer harm"
| doctrine.
|
| _Who did she know?_
|
| Her paper on antitrust was a _huge_ deal in the legal world.
| It would be more accurate to ask, "who knew her?" and the
| answer would be pretty much everybody in the legal community.
|
| _What the actual hell is this?_
|
| It was an attempt to block a merger. Which was slightly more
| successful than the last FTC action against Microsoft...which
| led to them unbundling IE for a few years. And that failure
| was back when the FTC was full of experienced lawyers coming
| off decades of actively pursuing antitrust cases.
|
| _Like I don 't care about her ideological positions or wtv,
| but has she actually succeeded in any anti trust case? Cuz I
| have been rage clicking through her history, and while her
| academic record is impressive, I see nothing successful
| during her tenure at the ftc. _
|
| The FTC hasn't had a successful major antitrust case in
| decades...
| SpaceManNabs wrote:
| > She wrote a paper that provides a new legal basis for
| antitrust enforcement in the U.S. that allows for different
| theories from the currently prevailing "consumer harm"
| doctrine.
|
| That is my point. This is nearly purely all academic
| experience. No experience in managing such a large system
| like the FTC. How is she supposed to manage people?
|
| > Her paper on antitrust was a huge deal in the legal
| world. It would be more accurate to ask, "who knew her?"
| and the answer would be pretty much everybody in the legal
| community.
|
| From what I understand talking to Columbia Law school grads
| in anti trust, it was just riding a populist wave. I don't
| know too much so I will take your word for it.
|
| > The FTC hasn't had a successful major antitrust case in
| decades...
|
| No, but they have done deals, something Lina Khan said she
| should consider more when she was getting roasted at that
| congressional hearing.
|
| On the other points: I don't know enough about this space
| to talk on the other points which is why I was asking those
| questions.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| > She seems wildly inexperienced.... Clearly smart and
| motivated, but wildly out of her depth. No wonder they failed
| to prevent the Microsoft + Activision Blizzard merger.
| Lawyers with decades of experience on her ran around her in
| circles
|
| Or maybe because there wasn't actually a good case to block
| the merger? Neither Activision-Blizzard nor Microsoft are
| anywhere near monopolies in gaming. Believe it or not "big
| tech is bad" is not a sufficient case for blocking a merger,
| actual consumer harm or threat of it has to be demonstrated.
|
| I'm less convinced this is an issue of Kahn and her team's
| inexperience, so much as that the FTC is being expected (or
| maybe directed by the executive) to take on cases that don't
| have any merit to placate public opinion. "Big tech bad" is a
| popular meme these days, and the FTC is pursuing cases
| accordingly even if those cases are on very shaky ground.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _maybe because there wasn 't actually a good case to
| block the merger_
|
| One, we have evidence of gross incompetence. See my other
| comment [1].
|
| Two, then pick better cases. Khan has been a public green
| light to anticompetitive mergers across the economy because
| she's playing the role of a public partisan hack instead of
| an enforcement agency.
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38183459
| jauntywundrkind wrote:
| Adversarial Intercompatibility is the existing tool the
| governments used that I like most. Facebook and Google both exist
| because they scraped the existing web (Myspace and all of the
| web, respectively), yet that capability is often a 'criminal
| violation of buissneas model' today, with harsh DMCA penalties.
|
| Users shouldn't ever have to be locked into an app. Like they
| shouldn't have been locked into just Ma Bell telephones.
| Carterphone should apply here.
|
| What tools that Lina listed did you like most? M&A (Mergers &
| acquisitions) was the main focus seemingly but she did go through
| other tools. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9CWbc6pekd8#t=37m3s
| MajimasEyepatch wrote:
| Web scraping is legal as long as the data is publicly available
| and you're not accidentally (or intentionally) DoSing the site.
| DMCA does not really come into it at all.
| tvanantwerp wrote:
| It's been disappointing to see Khan's FTC focus so much on big
| tech--and frequently fail to make their case--when so many other
| anti-competitive behavior in other sectors has gone unchecked.
| The consolidation of medical firms and hospitals comes to mind.
| Feels like they are picking their fights based more on ideology
| than on trying to minimize harms to American consumers from anti-
| competitive practices.
| slowmovintarget wrote:
| Hospital and medical firm consolidation was a predicted (and
| likely intentional) affect of the ACA. The head of the FTC
| wouldn't interrupt something seen as desirable by the
| administration.
| thisgoesnowhere wrote:
| This seems irrationally conspiratorial. Big tech is
| ridiculously influential if you equate lobbying money to
| influence.
|
| Amazon, Meta and Alphabet are at the top of the list for
| lobbying spend
|
| https://www.opensecrets.org/federal-lobbying/top-spenders
| emgeee wrote:
| FWIW Khan originally came to prominence because of her paper on
| Amazon specifically so it makes sense big tech would be a
| priority.
| monero-xmr wrote:
| It's more about saying they tried to do something (virtue
| signalling) than actually accomplishing anything. Think about
| it - would going after a bunch of tiny firms no one ever heard
| of make any headlines? No. But if the FTC goes after FAANG,
| even if it loses each one, they can blame the judiciary ("bad
| people") and signal they are trying to the part of the elite
| class that cares about this.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _they are picking their fights based more on ideology_
|
| Khan is fighting the best fight she can. The problem is she's
| woefully inexperienced in so many domains critical to the job.
|
| I'm increasingly convinced her hire was a deceitful compromise
| to placate the base, because she says the right things, as well
| as corporate interests, because she can't follow through on
| them. I've seen two big law firms tell companies to pursue
| risky mergers; while there is a higher chance they'll be
| challenged, there is a _much_ higher chance those challenges
| will fail.
| nabla9 wrote:
| Perception problem. FTC's big tech battles are the only ones
| getting publicity. https://www.ftc.gov/industry/health-care
|
| The US has two anti-trust authorities. FTC and DOJ antitrust
| division. US vs Google is DOJ case.
| emgeee wrote:
| As someone who attended the event in person I thought Khan was
| very respectful and open in her demeanor and I appreciated the
| fact that she took the time to come out and speak (also shout out
| to YC for hosting this events).
|
| I will say I was somewhat disappointed with the questions asked
| since many of them centered around AI and the recent Biden EO
| rather than actual examples of potential monopoly power such as
| the app store.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2023-11-07 23:01 UTC)