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Welcome to The Corner. In this issue, we discuss the key role of antitrust reform in moving forward meaningful privacy protections in the post-Roe world, and supply chain vulnerabilities affecting the U.S. and Europe.

Post-Roe Online Surveillance of Women Highlights Need to Break Power of Big Tech

Karina Montoya

The Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade combines two seemingly distant movements: women’s rights and data privacy advocates. The connection is easy to see. Big Tech business models that depend on the collection of massive amounts of data can expose women to criminal prosecution for their reproductive health choices.

The problem, however, is that privacy rules alone may not bring women the protections they seek. As long as Google, Facebook, and a few other giants continue to harvest sensitive personal data to drive their advertising-based business models, no American woman will be fully safe. The post-Roe world illuminates the need for antitrust tools to be part of any real solution.

The lack of privacy online has never been an “abstract” danger, as Axios described it [[link removed]] recently. Already online tracking and profiling of those who visit Planned Parenthood’s website [[link removed]] or use menstrual tracking apps are extension of the types of surveillance that have harmed other vulnerable populations. This includes real estate and rental agencies racially discriminating among readers [[link removed]] b [[link removed]]ased on interactions with their Facebook advertisements [[link removed]], or when data brokers sell personal information that enables criminals to harass, stalk or run scams [[link removed]].

At the center of the privacy issue is an ad tech business that has been designed to exploit the radical changes to antitrust policy imposed under the Reagan and Clinton administrations. As Jennifer Brody [[link removed]], U.S. policy and advocacy manager at Access Now, told Open Markets, “At the end of the day, people can’t vote with their feet on choosing platforms that are more rights-respecting because they don’t have a choice.” In a recent column [[link removed]], Brody described the business model of harvesting personal information to serve advertisers is arguably a human rights violation in itself.

Meanwhile, antitrust scholar Dina Srinivasan [[link removed]] has explained how this problem has worsened [[link removed]] over [[link removed]] time [[link removed]]. Using Facebook as an example, Srinivasan said the cost of social networking services “is an order of magnitude above what it was when Facebook faced real competition,” in terms of “the amount of data that users now must provide.”

In the post-Roe era, a number of lawmakers have put forward new legislation to protect women’s personal data, with initiatives such as My Body, My Data Act [[link removed]] or the Health and Location Data Protection Act [[link removed]]. But it’s also imperative that advocates for women’s rights and other groups take full account of the root of the problem: the radical relaxation of antitrust enforcement a generation ago, which allowed for Google and Facebook to become so massive and far reaching.

Since the Roe decision, Google has announced, plans to delete location data of women seeking abortions [[link removed]], though the corporation did not offer any plan to address the personal data that it collects from other websites and applications that connect to its ads network and that continue to profile users seeking these services.

The situation is not entirely bleak. The Biden administration’s initiatives [[link removed]] to end the Borkian antitrust philosophy that has opened the door to extreme concentration of power and control is a huge step forward. Congress’ Big Tech antitrust bills [[link removed]] and a potential Department of Justice antitrust lawsuit against Google [[link removed]] that might call for the corporation to sell parts of its ad tech business would also strike at Google’s core business model.

Report Identifies Bottlenecks in the Supply Chains of Key Sectors

Open Markets published a report that identifies extreme geographic and corporate concentration in supply chains critical to national security, including in sectors such as semiconductors, critical minerals, solar photovoltaics, pharmaceuticals, and electric vehicle batteries. Based on a public comment to the Bureau of Industry and Security, the report also recommends several strategies that the supply chain working group of the U.S.-EU Trade and Technology Council can take to increase resiliency in the supply chain of critical sectors. Read it here [[link removed]].

🔊 ANTI-MONOPOLY RISING: The Federal Trade Commission this week said it would level its full legal authority to protect the personal data of those using reproductive health services. The commission singled out data brokers and other third parties that routinely trade such sensitive information and fail to safeguard it. The announcement comes in the wake of President Biden’s executive order on abortion care and patient privacy. ( The [[link removed]] Verge [[link removed]])

The U.K.’s Competition and Markets Authority and Germany’s Federal Cartel Office both took steps last Wednesday to reign in Amazon’s monopoly power. The CMA said it planned to open an investigation into whether Amazon has a dominant position in the marketplace and uses that advantage to preference its retail business over third-party competitors. Germany’s watchdog said it would classify Amazon as meeting its threshold for special abuse controls. This finding gives the cartel office more powers over Amazon, such as the ability to prohibit “potential anticompetitive practices” and greater oversight of potential actions. ( TechCrunch [[link removed]])

In a deal with the European Commission last week, Amazon agreed to share more data with third-party merchants trying to sell products on its online marketplace, and to offer customers more vender options. In return, the Commission agreed that that Amazon will not have to pay a threatened fine of 10% of global revenues tied to allegedly broken a European Union law prohibiting platforms from engaging in self-preferencing. ( Financial [[link removed]] Times [[link removed]])

The Department of Justice announced that it would back an antitrust lawsuit filed in Chicago federal court against a group of 16 universities, including Ivy League schools such as Columbia, Brown and Yale, by former students. The plaintiffs allege that these institutions, in an effort to raise tuition costs, decided among each other not to compete over their financial aid offers to students. Prosecutors say the schools have broken a 1994 law that gave the schools an antitrust exemption on the condition that they commit to admissions that are need-blind. ( Bloomberg [[link removed]])

The FTC last week announced plans to file a lawsuit against grill maker Weber-Stephen Products LLC for illegally creating terms in their warranty that restrict customers right to repair products. Weber stated in its warranty that customers would not be able to exercise their warranty agreement if third-party parts are used to fix products. The FTC notes that the agreement violates the Magnuson Moss Warranty Act and harms consumers and competition by restricting consumer choice, costing consumers more money, undercutting independent business, and reducing resiliency in competition for aftermarket part manufacturers. The FTC commissioners voted 5-0 to pursue the lawsuit. ( FTC [[link removed]])

The General Court of the European Union on Wednesday upheld the EU competition authority’s decision to examine Illumina’s acquisition of Grail over competition concerns. Illumina’s acquisition attempt was referred to the Commission by competition agencies in France, Greece, Belgium, and other European countries. There are concerns that competition in the market for cancer detection tests would be reduced if the deal went through. ( The [[link removed]] Wall Street Journal [[link removed]])

EU antitrust regulators announced last week a new investigation into the Alliance for Open Media’s video licensing policy. AOM was founded in 2015 to create standard software for 4K video streaming on a group of devices using AV1 technology. Members include Google, Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Netflix, and others. The commission has information that AOM and members may be requiring licensing agreements for third-party innovators that use AV1 and also restricting their ability to compete with AV1 technical specifications. ( Reuters [[link removed]])

📝 WHAT WE'VE BEEN UP TO:

Executive Director Barry Lynn spoke at the Successfully Transforming the World conference, hosted by the Circle des Economistes, in France. Lynn addressed threats to national security, sovereignty, and industrial stability posed by extreme concentration of industrial capacity within international supply chains. Other speakers included European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde, French Finance Minister Bruno La Maire, Nobel economist Abhijit Banerjee, and development economist Dani Rodrik. The conference focused on the “urgency” of addressing the “economic and social shocks” that are disrupting the world.

Bloomberg [[link removed]] cited Senior Fellow Johnny Ryan on Google’s advertising methods. Ryan said that “ad giants such as Google and Facebook have thousands of different processing purposes for the data they collect.”

Sandeep Vaheesan, legal director of the Open Markets Institute, commented in Common Dreams [[link removed]]on recent revelations about Uber’s business practices. He said that leaked company documents serve as a "damning report on Uber's predatory methods of competition and growth, which antitrust enforcers here and abroad unfortunately aided and abetted because 'innovation.'”

Public Knowledge [[link removed]]cited Open Markets in an article about the two schools of thought within the realm of monopolies.

Mashed [[link removed]] mentioned Open Markets in an article calling out the elevated prices of meat, and beef in particular. “The Open Markets Institute believes the solution to these crazy prices is to break up these four major corporations so no company runs more than 10% of the meat industry (via Politico).”

Successful Farming [[link removed]] discussed a recent collaborative report [[link removed]] that graded the Biden Administration’s success in competition developments. “Farm Action and Open Markets Institute focused a large part of their midterm review on the USDA because they believe there is an urgent need to strengthen the department and build back the agencies that were lost in the restructuring that happened under the Trump-Pence administration.”

We appreciate your readership. Please consider making a contribution to support the continued publication of this newsletter.

DONATE [[link removed]] 📈 VITAL STAT: $72 million

The amount of money big tech industry groups have spent so far this year on advertising opposing new congressional legislation that would regulate their businesses, with nearly half that spending coming just in June, according to an analysis by the ad tracking firm AdImpact.

📚 WHAT WE'RE READING: “ Europe's Big Tech Law Is Approved. Now Comes the Hard Part. [[link removed]]” (Asha Allen, Center for Democracy and Technology): Allen lays out key next steps to implement the Digital Services Act, the most comprehensive content moderation and platform transparency regulation that will govern Europe, to avoid the enforcement problems seen in legislation such as the GDPR.

NIKKI USHER'S

NEW BOOK

News for the Rich, White, and Blue: How Place and Power Distort American Journalism

Nikki Usher, a senior fellow at Open Markets Institute’s Center for Journalism & Liberty [[link removed]], has released her third book, News for the Rich, White, and Blue: How Place and Power Distort American Journalism [[link removed]]. In her latest work, Usher offers a frank examination of the inequalities driving not just America’s journalism crisis but also certain portions of the movement to save it.

“We need to radically rethink the core functions of journalism, leverage expertise, and consider how to take the best of what the newspaper ethos of journalism can offer to places that have lost geographically specific news, “ says Usher, an associate professor at the University of Illinois-Champaign. “The news that powers democracy can be more inclusive.”

Usher is also the author of Making News at The New York Times (2014) and Interactive Journalism: Hackers, Data, and Code (2016).

News for the Rich, White, and Blue, published by Columbia University Press, is available as a hardback, paperback and e-book. You can order your copy here [[link removed]].

🔎 TIPS? COMMENTS? SUGGESTIONS?

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Written and edited by: Barry Lynn, Sandeep Vaheesan, Luke Goldstein, Garphil Julien, Karina Montoya, and Jody Brannon.

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