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Comment by nnvvhh | Hacker News Reader

But it literally is whataboutism. If a friend of yours expresses concern about big tech firms, and then you say, "But what about this other industry?" you have not engaged at all with the original statement and attempted to shift the conversation to something else entirely.

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Whataboutism is a fallacy when applied to moral arguments, not resource allocation arguments (which is what I at least read the OP as making). Everyone has a finite amount of time and resources for political participation, the DoJ (and every other prosecutor's office) has finite personnel and resources to devote to cases, etc. Unlike moral debate, choosing to protest/investigate some specific cause/company is a genuine zero-sum game because there are far more choices than there are resources to pursue them. Choosing one means not choosing another, so it's completely reasonable to question whether any given choice is providing the best ROI. That's a genuine major part of a prosecutor's job description, and it applies to citizens too. It's quite possible to put in a ton of time and effort and achieve nothing because it was a bad approach.

Thanks, this is a clearer expression of the argument I wanted to make.

We seem to disagree on what the original statement is.

When I talk to my peers, the original statement is some version of: "big tech is the most harmful monopoly in the USA today". Saying "what about monopolistic industry x?" is directly engaging with that statement.

It's possible that I'm conflating people's decisions to prioritize talking about tech companies with their actual priorities for which industries require government intervention.

You’re moving the goalposts. This article doesn’t say big tech is the most harmful monopoly in the USA. You made a top level comment so you weren’t responding to anyone, either.

This is an article about the justice department potentially bringing antitrust charges against Google and you made a top level comment saying “what about this other industry?”

This is whataboutism. As clear as the day is long.

I see. I'm interpreting the DoJ's choice as a claim that Google is the most harmful monopolist in the US, since they've chosen to go after Google (and not anybody else). That's why I wrote my original comment. However, that's not actually stated in the article.

I think my interpretation is reasonable, but I get why it's whataboutism in a discussion of the topic "is big tech monopolistic?".

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