Surveillance capitalism is not the capitalism of old, writes Harvard professor emerita Shoshana Zuboff in her new book The Age of Surveillance Capitalism.
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Is Amazon Violating the Sherman Act?
A new paper suggests that Amazon’s negative cash flow rapid expansion story may in fact conceal a long-term predatory pricing strategy that violates existing antitrust laws.
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Social Media Clickwraps and the “Manufacture of Consent”
A new study identifies a political economic interface design strategy that threatens privacy protections by maintaining “the biggest lie on the internet.”
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Facebook Is a Threat to Democracy — and the US Has a Responsibility to Rein It In
Facebook and Google have failed at self-regulation. If we want to avoid an authoritarian future, we need to reduce the influence of internet platforms, writes early Facebook investor Roger McNamee, author of the new book Zucked.
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If You Don’t Think Today’s Tech Giants Are Vicious, Just Ask Venture Capitalists
Silicon Valley today resembles the deepest part of the jungle known as the triple canopy, where tall trees block out all the light and nothing can grow on the ground. Who knows how many good businesses are not funded because of the fear of the tech monopolies?
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Editors’ Briefing: This Week in Political Economy (October 7-14)
The DOJ approves the CVS-Aetna merger, radically altering the landscape of US health care; Sheldon Adelson pumps millions into GOP races; Silicon Valley’s Saudi Arabia problem; and who has the right to compete in America?
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Does Uber Kill? The Real Cost of Ride-sharing
A new Stigler Center working paper finds that ride-sharing actually increases the number of new car registrations and fatal accidents.
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Editors’ Briefing: This Week in Political Economy (September 7–16)
Is the government’s response to the 2008 financial crisis responsible for the rise of populism in the US and Europe?; the real Google censorship scandal is its re-entry into China; Europe’s new controversial copyright law could change the Internet; and can Facebook unbreak democracy?
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Would Sen. Warner’s Ambitious Plan to Regulate Social Media Giants “Ruin” the Internet—Or Save it?
Sen. Mark Warner’s proposals to regulate social media platforms are by far the most ambitious to come from Congress. We gathered three experts to discuss their pros and cons.
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“If You’re Running an Authoritarian Government, You Love Facebook”
In a wide-ranging interview with ProMarket, media scholar Siva Vaidhyanathan explains why Facebook has become “too big to manage” and why he believes the only solution to its bigness is a global political movement aimed at breaking it up.
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Editors’ Briefing: This Week in Political Economy (June 30–July 7)
Scott Pruitt resigns from the EPA; a new report finds that digital platforms are not fully complying with the EU’s new privacy rules; Google, meanwhile, has a new privacy scandal; a month after its acquisition of Time Warner was approved, AT&T is already raising prices for its streaming TV customers; and former Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner’s new career draws criticism.
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Ohio v. American Express: Clarence Thomas Sets Sail on a Sea of Doubt, and, Mirabile Dictu, It’s Still a Bad Idea
SCOTUS Forum. In the first of a roundtable of op-eds on the Supreme Court’s Amex decision of June 25, Chris Sagers harks back to William Howard Taft’s warning that entertaining defenses of patently anticompetitive behavior would be to “set sail on a sea of doubt.” The Amex decision, writes Sagers, shows Taft was right.
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