Comment by elefanten | Hacker News Reader

Comment by elefanten | Hacker News Reader

Getting really sick of this story. Open Markets really comes across sleazy when you read the emails published by New America. [1] Slaughter's second statement, via Medium, is also worth reading. [2] Combined with the fact that Open Markets has been publishing anti-Google stuff for years while Google funded New America, Barry Lynn's side of the story make no sense at all.

Honestly, if you read some Barry Lynn and Matt Stoler and other people in that Open Markets crew... it's like 90% empty and loud rhetoric and maybe 10% cogent argumentation. It feels like a big circular link fest, takes so long to find something meaty. So much smoke and mirrors and equivocation on key terms... like, for example, "monopoly".

I'm not saying there aren't good questions to raise about Google's power, Google's anti-competitive practices or Google's link to research.

But the tone and quality of this public surge of the conversation driven by the Open Market 'scandal' seems highly manufactured and low quality. I can only assume some larger forces are throwing a ton of money in as well. But I guess that's how policy and economic talk tends to go when it hits the mainstream.

Edit: have to admit it's also riling me up that the pretty-far-left progressives like Stoller are happily now joining up with Tucker Carlson and that ilk, who raking Google over the coals for the James Damore memo fallout. Stoller was on Tucker's show yesterday. High fives.

[1] https://www.newamerica.org/new-america/press-releases/intere...

[2] https://medium.com/@slaughteram/when-the-truth-is-messy-and-...

If you're looking for more substantial content there's this series of discussions on youtube (I'd skip the first video):

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLNoVefpaPtVOsGyQnpNQR...

And this excellent article in the Yale Law Journal from Open Market's Lina Khan is a discussion on Amazon but is quite detailed and is probably the best argument the Open Markets program has put forward to date:

http://www.yalelawjournal.org/note/amazons-antitrust-paradox

You could also look into Barak Orbach, he's a legal scholar and his website has links to a lot of his articles on antitrust law. The modern anti-monopoly movement is really built around the idea that the courts made a mistake when they bought Robert Bork's (and others) argument that monopoly effects should be judged solely on price effects (obviously a big simplification.) Check out the links!

I've been following this closely, and having read everything Slaughter writes, I don't see how you can come down so hard against open markets- They exaggerated what happened but the essential facts are never disputed- even in Slaughter's most recent post.

1) Open Markets didn't let Slaughter know they were publishing work critical of Google.

2) Slaughter had to rush to explain the work to Google.

3) Schmidt expressed his displeasure. But didn't directly request anyone be fired

4) Slaughter told Open Markets they had to part ways, and mentioned how OM could make it harder for all of NA to get funding.

Thats the essence of the story, and no one is disputing it, and it strongly indicates New America is heavily influenced by their corporate sponsors.

Where were the exaggerations:

Barry didn't mention that he had aggreed to allow Slaughter to preview work and show it to google before he published. Also, Slaughter didn't outright fire anyone at OM. HOWEVER, Slaughter is bending the truth to imply that Google/Schmidt didn't influence her decision to remove open markets, when the entire scope of problems she has with Barry and OM come from the tension between Google and OM, and Google's desire to see what OM will publish before it becomes public. She writes a lot about how what OM says is false without EVER addressing the core issue! Instead, she tries to get around it by leaning on the fact that she was not commanded to do anything by Google.

Slaughter's July 7 email (3rd one on the page) to Lynn says "telling me one thing and doing another was just the last instance of a pattern of behavior that has been troubling to myself and your colleagues for over a year"

In multiple places, she indicates he's been difficult to work with and insubordinate. Probably understandable that a federated institution like New America, with multuple parallel units working on different interests, doesn't want the bullshit a person like that brings into the mix.

As her statement says, they tried to part amicably and leaving Open Markets intact and independent. Looks like Open Markets went for the publicity grab. Doesn't make me a fan.

Thanks for letting me bounce my thoughts off you, and it's good to get the confirmation that there is no disagreement about the fundamentals of what happened.

It's obvious Slaughter strangled the group. She joined four years ago, three years in his group is being forced to spin out because they won't communicate. So from the emails it seems to me that they need to notify Slaughter everytime the publish something for a sponsor and then there is probably some level of pushback levied when this happens. Well New America has Google and Comcast and AT&T and Microsoft and Facebook as sponsors along with about a hundred others. Realistically, the new boss, Slaughter, just wasn't able or willing to stand up to corporate pressure in order to allow Open Markets to do it's job. Lynn was put into a no-win situation as anyone who's ever had a boss who won't fight for you can tell you.

> Getting really sick of this story. Open Markets really comes across sleazy when you read the emails published by New America. [1] Slaughter's second statement, via Medium, is also worth reading. [2] Combined with the fact that Open Markets has been publishing anti-Google stuff for years while Google funded New America, Barry Lynn's side of the story make no sense at all.

As far as I can tell, though, Slaughter doesn't contradict any of the facts laid out by Lynn.

Also, I find this passage from [2] troubling:

> On the contrary, Barry’s new organization and campaign against Google is the opening salvo of one group of Democrats versus another group of Democrats in the run-up to the 2020 election, at a time when I personally think the country faces far greater challenges of racism, violence, a broken political system, and geographic and partisan divisions so great that we are losing any common sense of what we stand and strive for as a country.

Should we not pay attention to problems related to the growing power of large corporations and monopolies just because the US has other significant issues?

We're only supposed to pay attention to the growing power of large corporations and monopolies that fund the opposition party. You're not supposed to question the companies your own money comes from! /s

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