1. One of the best changes in recent years is the GOP abandoning libertarianism. Here's GOP Rep. Greg Steube: “I do think there is an appetite amongst Republicans, if the Dems wanted to try to break up Big Tech, I think there is support for that."

2. And @RepKenBuck, who offered a thoughtful Third Way report on antitrust law in 2020, weighed in quite reasonably on Biden antitrust frameworks. https://t.co/DzodRnRYtP
3. I believe this change is sincere because it's so pervasive and beginning to result in real policy changes. Example: The North Dakota GOP is taking on Apple's app store. https://t.co/dC0iRGjcaL
4. And yet there's a problem. The GOP establishment is still pro-big tech. Trump, despite some of his instincts, appointed pro-monopoly antitrust enforcers. Antitrust chief Makan Delrahim helped big tech, and the antitrust case happened bc he was recused. https://t.co/T766mbylBn
5. At the other sleepy antitrust agency, the Federal Trade Commission, Trump appointed commissioners
@FTCPhillips and @CSWilsonFTC are both pro-monopoly. Both voted *against* the antitrust case on FB. That case was 3-2, with a GOP Chair and 2 Dems teaming up against 2 Rs.
6. Despite Trump's disdain for Jeff Bezos, his FTC, which has jurisdiction over Amazon, did nothing. Trump FTC Commissioner @FTCPhillips's advisors Jasmine Rosner and Amy Posner both left the Federal Trade Commission to go to... you guessed it, Amazon! https://t.co/R6iYR4idQt
7. There's more. Morgan Kennedy, top advisor to Trump FTC Chair Joe Simons, helped structure the weak YouTube settlement over child privacy violations. Now she's a lobbyist at... Google! https://t.co/JmvgilwyAb
8. And Bilal Sayyed, Trump's Director of the Office of Policy Planning at the Federal Trade Commission, just joined Google/FB/Amazon trade association Tech Freedom. https://t.co/vdhNQsyXg4
9. I don't have a problem with people working in the private sector. But I do have a problem with people in the public sector working on behalf of big tech monopolies. That's what happened under Trump. It's why antitrust cases only came in the waning days of his administration.
10. Pro-monopoly commissioners @FTCPhillips and @CSWilsonFTC are going to continue to advocate for monopolists in the pharmaceutical, tech, defense, and every other sector out there, even as Republicans in Congress rail against big tech.
11. That's something that needs to change, if the Republicans are going to make good on their new philosophy of opposing big tech monopolies. I think they will. But their libertarian lawyers are still standing in the way.

More from Tech

These past few days I've been experimenting with something new that I want to use by myself.

Interestingly, this thread below has been written by that.

Let me show you how it looks like. 👇🏻


When you see localhost up there, you should know that it's truly an experiment! 😀


It's a dead-simple thread writer that will post a series of tweets a.k.a tweetstorm. ⚡️

I've been personally wanting it myself since few months ago, but neglected it intentionally to make sure it's something that I genuinely need.

So why is that important for me? 🙂

I've been a believer of a story. I tell stories all the time, whether it's in the real world or online like this. Our society has moved by that.

If you're interested by stories that move us, read Sapiens!

One of the stories that I've told was from the launch of Poster.

It's been launched multiple times this year, and Twitter has been my go-to place to tell the world about that.

Here comes my frustration.. 😤

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I just finished Eric Adler's The Battle of the Classics, and wanted to say something about Joel Christiansen's review linked below. I am not sure what motivates the review (I speculate a bit below), but it gives a very misleading impression of the book. 1/x


The meat of the criticism is that the history Adler gives is insufficiently critical. Adler describes a few figures who had a great influence on how the modern US university was formed. It's certainly critical: it focuses on the social Darwinism of these figures. 2/x

Other insinuations and suggestions in the review seem wildly off the mark, distorted, or inappropriate-- for example, that the book is clickbaity (it is scholarly) or conservative (hardly) or connected to the events at the Capitol (give me a break). 3/x

The core question: in what sense is classics inherently racist? Classics is old. On Adler's account, it begins in ancient Rome and is revived in the Renaissance. Slavery (Christiansen's primary concern) is also very old. Let's say classics is an education for slaveowners. 4/x

It's worth remembering that literacy itself is elite throughout most of this history. Literacy is, then, also the education of slaveowners. We can honor oral and musical traditions without denying that literacy is, generally, good. 5/x