Opposing Comments Drive Organizations’ Social Media Engagement but Undermine Offline Goals
In new research in collaboration with Color of Change, Dante Donati and Lena Song find that comments on social media posts help drive platform engagement for organizations. However, comment sections are often populated by a vocal minority, and adversarial comments from them come with reduced off-platform support for the original posters.
How Toxic Content Drives User Engagement on Social Media
Most users on social media have encountered toxic content: rude, disrespectful, or hostile posts or comments. A study using a browser extension estimates the effect of toxic content on user engagement and welfare.
Meta-Within Should Be Viewed in the Context of Meta’s Broader Efforts To Monopolize Social Networking
A California court recently denied the FTC’s motion to block the Meta-Within merger. Brandon Nye writes that the FTC could have expanded its argument...
Antitrust Needs Better Models for Estimating Social Welfare in the Digital Age
In a forthcoming article, Seth Benzell and Felix Chang explore how antitrust regulators can use insights from a new quantitative model of Facebook that...
How to Converge the US and European Antitrust Approaches Toward Big Tech
The growing consensus that Big Tech platforms need to be restrained creates a unique opportunity for international cooperation among antitrust enforcers. The complexity of...
How Should Antitrust Deal With Facebook? A Stigler Center Panel Investigates
Panelists at the Stigler Center’s recent antitrust conference look at the antitrust case against Facebook and discuss potential theories of harm, as well as...
Big Tech ‘Self-Preferencing’ Bills May Hurt—Not Help— Antitrust Reform
A new paper from Erik Hovenkamp outlines pitfalls contained in newly proposed antitrust reform legislation that targets Big Tech companies. He proposes remedies and...
Rep. Ken Buck on the Need for Antitrust Reform: “Big Corporate America Scares People”
In an interview with ProMarket, Republican congressman Ken Buck explains why antitrust enforcement is so crucial to the US economy and American democracy, expands on...
Seize the Means of Computation
To regain internet autonomy from Big Tech companies, lower switching costs with legislation that allows new services to subvert network effects and encourage adversarial...
Why Competition Alone Won’t Bring About a More Inclusive Digital Economy
The current reforms being debated in the US and Europe to tackle the challenges posed by tech giants tend to see more competition as...
