social media
Economists Agree That Stronger Legal Liability for Online Platforms Would Reduce Disinformation
Will increasing the liability of internet platforms mitigate disinformation? Economists weighed in on the effects of limiting or repealing protections for Big Tech through a recent survey from the Forum for the Kent A. Clark Center for Global Markets—previously the Initiative on Global Markets—at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.
The Thorny Problem of Social Media Platform Political Harms and Freedom of Speech
University of Chicago Booth/Stigler Center for the Study of the Economy and the State 2002 Antitrust and Competition Conference “Antitrust: What’s Next?” Panel Discussion “Big Tech & Freedom of Speech” moderated by Binyamin Appelbaum of the New York Times with panelists Gilad Edelman of WIRED, Francis Fukuyama of Stanford University, Eric Goldman of Santa Clara University and Ellen Goodman of Rutgers University. April 21, 2022 (photo by Anne Ryan for University of Chicago)
The Biggest Problem Facing America: Misinformation-At-Scale
Technology companies must put community safety and privacy at the core of their business model, ensure that advertising technology is utilized responsibly,...
Kicking Around Section 230: Don’t Confuse Politics and Policymaking
Congressional hearings may make for good TV and viral social media posts, but reforming Section 230 would be more difficult than it...
Addictive Social Media: Why We Need Regulation and Competition for Digital Platforms
Social media is associated with the prevalence of mood disorders, depression, and anxiety. With no regulations to address the dangers of addictive...
Bethany McLean’s Weekend Reading List: Elder Care Facilities, Twitter, and Pot
Corruption, lobbying, corporate malfeasance, and frauds: a weekly unconventional selection of must-read articles by investigative journalist Bethany McLean.
Facebook’s Enduring Control Over Social Media Markets
According to the British Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), Facebook accounts for 75 percent of the UK’s social media market. Over the past 10 years,...
How to Mitigate the Political Impacts of Social Media and Digital Platform Concentration
Ahead of its annual conference on Digital Platforms, Markets and Democracy, the Stigler Center formed a committee to produce independent white papers that will...
Editors’ Briefing: This Week in Political Economy (August 11–18)
Elizabeth Warren’s new bill seeks to radically alter US corporate governance; America’s top CEOs earned 312 times more than their average workers last year; regulators...
“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...
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Antitrust and Competition
A World With Far Fewer Mergers
Brooke Fox and Walter Frick analyze research and ideas presented at the Stigler Center Antitrust and Competition Conference that question the value of mergers.
Commentary
The Banking Risks of Central Bank Digital Currencies
The implementation of central bank digital currencies as the primary medium of exchange would exacerbate the flaws of our current fiat system which encourage banks to overextend credit and create liabilities that they cannot redeem. This will worsen the already recurring cycles of financial crises, writes Vibhu Vikramaditya.
Antitrust and Competition
The Whig History of the Merger Guidelines
A pervasive "Whig" view of United States antitrust history among scholars and practitioners celebrates the Merger Guidelines' implementation of increasingly sophisticated economic methods since their...
Antitrust and Competition
Algorithmic Collusion in the Housing Market
While the development of artificial intelligence has led to efficient business strategies, such as dynamic pricing, this new technology is vulnerable to collusion and consumer harm when companies share the same software through a central platform. Gabriele Bortolotti highlights the importance of antitrust enforcement in this domain for the second article in our series, using as a case study the RealPage class action lawsuit in the Seattle housing market.
Antitrust and Competition
The Future Markets Model Explains Meta/Within: A Reply to Herb Hovenkamp
In response to both Herb Hovenkamp’s February 27 article in ProMarket and, perhaps more importantly, also to Hovenkamp’s highly regarded treatise, Lawrence B. Landman, first, shows that the Future Markets Model explains the court’s decision in Meta/Within. Since Meta was not even trying to make a future product, the court correctly found that Meta would not enter the Future Market. Second, the Future Markets Model is the analytical tool which Hovenkamp says the enforcers lack when they try to protect competition to innovate.
