Dec 13, 2020 · 37m · another-podcast
The FTC and Facebook
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gold bands on the timeline = statements, start to end. Hover to read, click to jump. CC turns on captions
In this podcast episode, Benedict Evans and Toni Kahn-Brown critically analyze the FTC and US state antitrust lawsuits against Facebook, contrasting retrospective corporate breakups with forward-looking European digital regulation. They explore why unwinding mergers and pursuing company-specific litigation fail to solve systemic platform harms, advocating instead for comprehensive, industry-wide regulatory standards.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. The hosts hold 85.7% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
The hosts as informed peer 8.7 Guest teaching 1.6 Guest disagreement 1.1 The hosts pushing back 2.4
speaking balance: gold is the hosts, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 22:04 Kahn-Brown challenges Evans on the link between harms and ad models
Kahn-Brown pushes back on Evans's assertion by questioning whether content issues are fundamentally tied to advertising incentives.
Hardest push from the hosts ▶ 21:40 Evans dismisses the claim that business models drive harmful contentEvans forcefully rejects the prevailing argument that algorithms and ad models cause harmful content, citing non-algorithmic WhatsApp violence in India.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 31:43 Kahn-Brown details French CNIL data privacy enforcementKahn-Brown educates the discussion by introducing practical regulatory nuances from the French data authority regarding social media campaign messaging.
The host holds their own ▶ 35:10 Evans dismantles academic argument against targeted advertisingEvans demonstrates deep industry expertise by explaining how banning all targeted advertising would eliminate first-party publisher monetization models.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | The hosts as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | The hosts pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| FTC Allegations and the Retrospective Do-Over Debate | 8 | 1 | 1 | 2 | Evans lays out the foundational details of the FTC and state lawsuits against Facebook, highlighting the retrospective double jeopardy critique. The dialogue is collaborative, with Kahn-Brown prompting the host to unpack why public reaction was surprised. | |
| Market Definition and Social Media Competition | 9 | 2 | 1 | 2 | Evans delivers an in-depth analysis of market definition in antitrust enforcement, illustrating the structural differences between Instagram's social graph and TikTok's recommendation engine. Kahn-Brown concurs with the comparison between TikTok and YouTube. | |
| US Antitrust Paradigms: Google DOJ Case vs. Facebook Lawsuit | 9 | 1 | 1 | 2 | Evans contrasts the narrow Google DOJ search case with the structural Facebook antitrust lawsuit, invoking legal shifts from consumer price metrics to Lina Khan's platform theories. Kahn-Brown facilitates the transition with targeted questions. | |
| European Outcome-Based Regulation vs. American Corporate Breakups | 9 | 1 | 1 | 2 | Evans systematically deconstructs the assumption that corporate breakups resolve content moderation and network effect challenges, contrasting US remedies with European outcome-based regulation. Kahn-Brown acknowledges the novelty of separating ownership from content harms. | |
| Platform Harm, Business Models, and Silicon Valley Parochialism | 9 | 1 | 2 | 4 | Evans strongly rejects the conventional view that algorithmic ad models are solely responsible for platform harms, citing WhatsApp mob violence in India. Kahn-Brown acknowledges that her thinking had defaulted to the advertising model. | |
| Limitations of Case-by-Case Litigation vs. General Rulemaking | 8 | 2 | 1 | 2 | Evans evaluates systemic regulation versus retrospective litigation, highlighting contradictory FTC consent decrees over data APIs. Both speakers agree on the limitations of single-company antitrust actions. | |
| The Complex Future of Digital Regulation and Compliance | 9 | 3 | 1 | 3 | Evans uses historical safety regulation analogies and an anecdote about targeted advertising to emphasize regulatory complexity, while Kahn-Brown contributes real-world insight from the French CNIL agency. |
Statements from this episode (13)
Evans: FTC knew Instagram was a competitive threat when approving acquisition
“The FTC basically knew everything that they knew, know, that they know now. They knew that these were competitive. They knew that Facebook must see them as competitive threats. Nothing's actually changed, except that the FTC has just changed their mind. And I …”
Evans: TikTok competes with YouTube rather than Instagram due to graph mechanics
“I would actually argue that Instagram is about people you choose to follow, and mostly people you know, whereas TikTok is about people you don't know. It's a completely different graph, and it's a recommendation-based graph, not a people you've met-based graph…”
Evans: Banning search default payments would eliminate Firefox's business model
“They say that you're not allowed to pay third-party browsers to be the default search engine, but that's Firefox's whole business model, so if they don't do that, Firefox goes away.”
Evans: US antitrust historically prioritized low consumer prices over consumer choice
“And so for a long time, there'd been this divergence between the US and the rest of the world in which US competition law had got very narrowly focused on low consumer prices as your objective. The argument was, well, if the prices are cheap, it doesn't matter…”
Evans: Facebook would engage in the same practices without Instagram or WhatsApp
“Supposing WhatsApp didn't happen, supposing Instagram hadn't happened, supposing they'd happened and failed, supposing they'd happened, gotten bought by Fox, rolled into MySpace and killed. And so Facebook was the only thing. And Facebook would be doing all th…”
Benedict Evans: Search and social networks are natural monopolies like water utilities
“There are clearly structural reasons why it's very hard to create a new search engine or to create a new social network. There are very strong network effects, which I, the last, one of the last pieces I wrote, I described as basically a natural monopoly. And …”
Evans: Breaking up Instagram or YouTube would not reduce harmful content
“If Instagram was a separate company, that wouldn't have any effect on teenage girls looking at self-harm content on Instagram. If YouTube was a separate company, that wouldn't have any effect on the prevalence of jihadi content. That's not a competition proble…”
Evans: Spinning off Instagram or YouTube will not make competing easier
“If Instagram was a separate company, that wouldn't make it easier to compete with them. Because the network effects that make it hard to compete with Instagram are part of Instagram. They don't come from it being owned by Facebook. The same thing with YouTube.…”
Evans: The idea that a standalone YouTube would build a search engine is insane
“Like, I genuinely heard somebody say the other day that if YouTube was a separate The company, the first thing it would do would be make a general purpose web search engine and compete with Google. You're out of your fucking mind. That's like saying that if yo…”
Evans: WhatsApp proves harmful content is not caused by ads or algorithms
“WhatsApp doesn't have an ad model. WhatsApp has massive problems with harmful content. They have massive problems with rumors in India, for example, and people forming mobs and killing each other based on rumors on WhatsApp. They don't have advertising. They d…”
Evans: FTC seeks contradictory consent decrees on Facebook data APIs
“Today's FTC is demanding a consent decree that says Facebook has to open up Data APIs. And two years ago, they got another consent decree that said Facebook has to close down its data APIs.”
Evans: Antitrust fines lack deterrent value due to decade-long enforcement lags
“The enforcement is so disconnected from the original decision that, like, nobody who's actually Nobody who's making those decisions understands that in 10 years' time they'll be defined as a monopoly. I mean, they're arguing about it now. You know, there's peo…”