Hacker News Reader

Comment by ratsmack | Hacker News Reader

This makes me wonder if they purposely submitted a weak case to appear proactive for political purposes, while knowing it would be tossed out. There is a lot of money that flows from big tech into the political coffers, so you have to be careful to not rock he boat too much.

View on HN

Unlikely. High ranking government lawyers usually don't just put on cases to appease the donors of the executive. These are high-achieving, career-driven people. They want to win.

Someone still “wins” if they exit the FTC and immediately receive a highly paid lobbying job. The reality of the situation indicates that OP’s idea is likely, actually:

https://www.citizen.org/article/ftc-big-tech-revolving-door-...

OP's idea is that the FTC punted this at the direction of an elected official who gets campaign donations from tech companies. It does not follow that because the FTC has a revolving door problem (which it definitely does), there was executive pressure to punt. Furthermore, FTC officials tend to work at corporations primarily because they are among the most knowledgeable and well-connected people in the space, not necessarily because there is some kind of slow-acting quid pro quo here. It's still a problem, but it's not really analogous to the idea OP had.

> This makes me wonder if they purposely submitted a weak case to appear proactive for political purposes, while knowing it would be tossed out.

I think its more likely that they were confident that what occurred (complaint dismissed with leave to refile) was the worst they would get, and the best case was that the court would accept the weak and easier to prove claims as sufficient fact allegations to support the case.

> There is a lot of money that flows from big tech into the political coffers

It apparently wasn't enough to prevent Lina Khan's appointment. She's not particularly industry friendly, and I suspect that the FTC will file the amended complaint in this case.

I wouldn't be suprised that FTC is just a friend. I mean it's year 2021, they already figured this out in the 19th century.

It's certainly plausible. I wonder how many of our institutions are really "just for show," like the TSA.

What if we replaced the whole anti-monopoly/pro-competition apparatus with a sign that just said "Everything is fine, this is the market working as intended."?

> What if we replaced the whole anti-monopoly/pro-competition apparatus with a sign that just said "Everything is fine, this is the market working as intended."?

"This is the market working as intended," does not imply "everything is fine."

Reply on news.ycombinator.com