Biden's ceding of antitrust policy to the left of the party, combined with disaffected GOP senators viewing Khan as their enemy's enemy, led to Khan's historic appointment as FTC Chair. In that position, she was joined by a slate of Biden trustbusters, including #JonathanKanter at the DOJ Antitrust Division, #TimWu at the #WhiteHouse, and other important, skilled and principled fighters like #AlvaroBedoya (FTC), #RebeccaSlaughter (FTC), #RohitChopra (#CFPB), and many others.

10/

But neither claim holds water. Far from being pie-in-the-sky idealists with no theory of change, the party's left is *incredibly* good at getting stuff done. Take the antitrust enforcers #LinaKhan and #JonathanKanter, as well as the recently departed #TimWu. They aren't mere idealists - they're *brilliant* tacticians and proceduralists who have figured out how to use their existing authority to do more than decades of their predecessors combined:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/18/administrative-competence/#i-know-stuff

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#10yrsago Teaching TCP/IP headers with #legos https://righteousit.wordpress.com/2010/06/27/practical-visual-three-dimensional-pedagogy-for-internet-protocol-packet-header-control-fields/

#10yrsago Future Tense: #NealStephenson and #TimWu talk future, sf and tech https://www.slate.com/articles/podcasts/future_tense/2013/04/neal_stephenson_joins_us_for_the_first_stranger_than_fiction_podcast.html

#10yrsago #SOPA’s daddy is now in charge of government science funding, and he hates peer-review https://www.science.org/content/article/us-lawmaker-proposes-new-criteria-choosing-nsf-grants

#5yrsago Hope Larson’s “All Summer Long,” lively YA graphic novel about tween friendships, rock and roll, and being yourself https://memex.craphound.com/2018/05/01/hope-larsons-all-summer-long-lively-ya-graphic-novel-about-tween-friendships-rock-and-roll-and-being-yourself/

7/

@bonifartius That’s indeed the most sustainable option but quickly ignored in the land of #tyrannyOfConvenience (#TimWu). As you might have noticed from the two polls the drying rack is the winner in ~70% of the world outside the US but it’s a hard sell in the US. Hence the dehumidified closet approach. Heat pumps are an unexplained failure in the US but perhaps dehumidifiers are the answer.

These three - #TimWu, recently departed from the White House; #LinaKhan at the FTC; and #JonathanKanter at the DOJ - wasted no time turning word into deed, taking on mergers, addressing anticompetitive conduct (like blocking #noncompetes and protecting #RightToRepair), and filing suit against abusive firms:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/05/09/rest-in-piss-robert-bork/#harmful-dominance

24/

#15yrsago God Save Stan Lee tee https://memex.craphound.com/2008/01/24/god-save-stan-lee-tee/

#15yrsago #FBI whistleblower tells librarians about discriminatory practices and bad procedure at the Bureau https://web.archive.org/web/20080127183738/http://alfocus.ala.org/videos/fbi-whistleblower-answers-questions

#10yrsago #TimWu: “Escape From Tomorrow” doesn’t violate Disney’s copyright https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/its-a-mad-mad-mad-mad-disney-world

#5yrsago EU fines Qualcomm over $1 billion for anti-competitive iPhone deal https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/IP_18_421

4/

This has a #tyrannyOfConvenience element to it. This is a good essay on the topic by #TimWu (the guy who coined the term #netNeutrality): https://www.nytimesn7cgmftshazwhfgzm37qxb44r64ytbb2dj3x62d2lljsciiyd.onion/2018/02/16/opinion/sunday/tyranny-convenience.html

I've just managed to ask this.

Tim's answer: "Isn't it obvious?"

#TimWu #MasterSwitch #DoubleEntendre #CaptainObvious

It took a couple of years of looking at the cover of Tim Wu's The Master Switch before I realised that there is double-meaning to that title.

I'm not sure that's been observed before, and haven't found anyone noting this.

Or if Wu intended that or not.

It's ... clever, whether intentional or not.

#TimWu #MasterSwitch #Media #Monopoly #DoubleEntendre

Big Tech Showdown Looms As Biden Taps Top Critics Lina Khan, Tim Wu

...President Biden on Monday nominated Khan to the Federal Trade Commission, an agency tasked with enforcing competition laws. She is the splashiest addition to Biden's growing roster of Big Tech critics, including fellow Columbia Law School professor Tim Wu, who announced earlier this month he would join the National Economic Council.

The news suggests the White House is preparing for a showdown with the tech industry at a time when federal and state regulators are already pursuing investigations and lawsuits challenging the dominance of Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google. Biden has also called for the repeal of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, a legal shield for Internet platforms that has come under fire from both Democrats and Republicans. ...

https://www.npr.org/2021/03/22/975220122/big-tech-showdown-looms-as-biden-taps-top-critics-lina-khan-tim-wu

#LinaKhan #TimWu #FTC #antitrust #monopoly #uspol #regulation #WelcomeChange

@adnan360 You're right to say DDG is winning people over with convenience. DDG fully exploits the chance to be the /default/ seach in browsers, which culminates from both privacy propaganda & DDG's $25k donations to browser projects (e.g. Tor Project). I highly recommend reading #TimWu's #TyrannyOfConvenience article: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/16/opinion/sunday/tyranny-convenience.html

@pluralistic It turns out that Tim Wu made the surveillance-monopoly connection ... in 2013:

"Why Monopolies Make Spying Easier"

These days, America has one dominant search engine, one dominant social-networking site, and four phone companies. The structure of the information industry often goes unnoticed, but it has an enormous effect on the ease with which the government spies on citizens. The remarkable consolidation of the communications and Web industries into a handful of firms has made spying much simpler and, therefore, more likely to happen. ...

https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/why-monopolies-make-spying-easier

Great explanation and examples.

#surveillance #monopoly #TimWu