Herbert Hovenkamp (Penn Law and Wharton) shares his thoughts on the progressive antitrust movement, the government’s antitrust campaign against Big Tech, the 2023 Merger Guidelines, the famous tech antitrust cases of the past, and more.

Links:

Charting Antitrust’s Future

Antitrust Policy After Biden

Structural Antitrust Relief Against Digital Platforms

Breaking Up Google Would Be a Big Mistake

What Big Tech Antitrust Gets Wrong

Jonathan Adler (Case Western Law) and Ari Cohn (FIRE) discuss the FDA’s war on vaping and the Supreme Court case FDA v. Wages and White Lion Investments.

Topics include:

• The (comparative) health case for vaping
• Yet another moral panic
• Kids take risks!
• The bungling FDA
• A disappointing oral argument
• Fine points of administrative law
• Will the Trump admin switch course?

Links:

En Banc Fifth Circuit Rejects FDA's Vaping Regulation "Surprise Switcheroo"

Baptists, Bootleggers & Electronic Cigarettes

Uneducating Americans on Vaping

The Food & Drug Administration Has a Vaping Problem

More Evidence that Bans on Flavored Vaping Products May Increase Teen Smoking

Speech Regulation and Tobacco Harm Reduction

Samantha Lai (Carnegie Endowment) discusses the state of federated social media (Bluesky, Threads, Mastodon, etc.).

Topics include:

• A map of the fediverse
• What makes Bluesky new?
• Tools for tiny moderators
• Turning the dial of centralization
• “Community” or “echo chamber”?
• Will one platform “win” the fediverse?
• The beauty of exit
• The beauty of the unknown

Links:

Online Safety and the “Great Decentralization” – The Perils and Promises of Federated Social Media

Some (Slightly Biased) Thoughts on the State of Decentralized Social Media

Dot Social with Mike McCue

Tech Policy Podcast 358: Information Animals Fighting Information Wars

Tech Policy Podcast 352: Yoel Roth on the Future of Content Moderation

Geoff Manne (International Center for Law & Economics) and Corbin Barthold (TechFreedom) discuss the Department of Justice’s antitrust lawsuit against Apple.

Topics include:

• The DoJ’s case: five weird tricks 
• Apple: closed from the start
• Let’s talk about green bubbles …
• Refusal to deal or exclusionary conduct?
• A well-defined product market (for once)
• Triple-bank-shot antitrust liability (eww)
• DoJ-designed smartphones: what could go wrong!

Links:

Lina Khan’s Norm-Busting Legacy

Tech Policy Podcast 384: The Facebook Antitrust Case

Tech Policy Podcast 357: The Amazon Antitrust Case

Tech Policy Podcast 353: The Google Search Antitrust Trial

Tech Policy Podcast 302: Epic v. Apple

Daphne Keller (Stanford Cyber Policy Center) and Corbin Barthold (TechFreedom) have a wide-ranging conversation about the impact of the EU’s Digital Services Act on content moderation, the costs and benefits of platform transparency, the pervasiveness of complexity, the work of James C. Scott, Germans’ abiding thirst for data, the Burmese heroin trade, and more. For more, see Daphne’s recent article in Lawfare, “The Rise of the Compliant Speech Platform.”

Topics include:

• Big Tech and the DSA
• Daphne the investigative reporter
• A court case for every comment removal
• The EU: bean counter of human dignity
• James C. Scott appreciation day
• What does the DSA mean for the fediverse?
• Capitalism as a force for quantification
• Daphne’s metaphysics

Links:

The Rise of the Compliant Speech Platform

The Humpty Dance

Marshall Kosloff (The Realignment) discusses the abundance agenda—what it is, what it could achieve, how it applies in various policy areas, how to build a political coalition around it, how to implement it, and more.

Topics include:

• Abundance of what?
• Energy policy: wtf is going on
• Fixing defense procurement
• Fixing state capacity
• Building an abundance coalition
• Culture war forever?
• Abundance after the 2024 election

Links:

The Realignment

Arsenal of Democracy

The Harris Broadband Rollout Has Been a Fiasco

The White House Bet Big on Intel. Will It Backfire?

(Still) Against Degrowth

Tech Policy Podcast 381: American Techno-Industrial Leadership — With Noah Smith

From April 12, 2022 (Episode 317): Alec Stapp discusses the work, goals, and philosophy of his innovative new think tank, Institute for Progress.

Topics include:

• Metascience: the key field you’ve never heard of
• Tech industry 🤝 policy wonks
• Alec’s theory of change
• How to evangelize for progress
• Baby making music (j/k not j/k)
• The need for an abundance agenda

Links:

Institute for Progress 

Tech Policy Podcast 381: American Techno-Industrial Leadership — With Noah Smith 

Tech Policy Podcast 327: The Collapse of Complex Societies — With Joseph Tainter

Paul Grewal (Coinbase) takes us on a deep dive into all aspects of crypto regulation, litigation, and legislation. A crossover episode with the Washington Legal Foundation / TechFreedom Tech in the Courts series.

Topics include:

• The elevator pitch for crypto
• Securities law: it’s not the New Deal anymore
• The inconsistent SEC
• SEC v. Coinbase / Coinbase v. SEC
• Operation Choke Point 2.0
• The need for crypto legislation
• Central bank digital currencies (are dumb)
• Satoshi Nakamoto: a $68 billion mystery

Links:

Keep Crypto Free

Coinbase’s Petition for Rulemaking to the SEC

Operation Choke Point 2.0 Is Underway, and Crypto Is in Its Crosshairs

Tech Policy Podcast 312: Web3

Corbin Barthold (TechFreedom) provides a guided tour of the Supreme Court’s major questions doctrine.

Topics include:

• Major questions: an introduction
• No one knows what it means, but it’s provocative
• Is major questions new?
• Stories we tell about Congress
• Welcome to the kludgeocracy
• Politics vs. expertise
• The Supreme Court cannot save us

Links:

West Virginia v. EPA: Sound and Fury, Signifying What?

Tech Policy Podcast 311: Administrative Law, and Why You Should Care

Sayash Kapoor (Princeton) discusses the incoherence of precise p(doom) predictions and the pervasiveness of AI “snake oil.” Check out his and Arvind Narayanan’s new book, AI Snake Oil: What Artificial Intelligence Can Do, What It Can’t, and How to Tell the Difference.

Topics include:

• What’s a prediction, really?
• p(doom): your guess is as good as anyone’s
• Freakishly chaotic creatures (us, that is)
• AI can’t predict the impact of AI
• Gaming AI with invisible ink
• Life is luck—let’s act like it
• Superintelligence (us, that is)
• The bitter lesson
• AI danger: sweat the small stuff

Links:

AI Snake Oil: What Artificial Intelligence Can Do, What It Can’t, and How to Tell the Difference

AI Existential Risk Probabilities Are Too Unreliable to Inform Policy 

AI Snake Oil (Substack)

Geoff Manne (International Center for Law & Economics) and Corbin Barthold (TechFreedom) discuss the many, many flaws in the FTC’s antitrust lawsuit against Meta (Facebook). 

A crossover episode with the Washington Legal Foundation / TechFreedom Tech in the Courts series.

Topics include:

- The ontology of Facebook

- Social networking: it’s not 2008 anymore

- The FTC’s made-up market

- The WhatsApp Catch-22

- Has Facebook been enshittified?

- Product design by government: bad idea!

- Growing startups: hard, actually

Links:

The Feds Unfriend Facebook: Why the FTC’s Meta Antitrust Case Should Fail

Tech Policy Podcast 357: The Amazon Antitrust Case

Tech Policy Podcast 353: The Google Search Antitrust Trial

Tech Policy Podcast 302: Epic v. Apple