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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.

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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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