Zuckerberg in the dock (permalink)

It's been more than a decade in the making, but Facebook – or, if you prefer, Meta – is going on trial for antitrust violations, with the highest possible stakes and the worst possible evidence (for Facebook).

The Big Tech On Trial blog was started to follow the Google antitrust case, the biggest antitrust case of the century, which was barely noticed by most of the press. Partly that was down to the 40 year period in which antitrust was not enforced, a prolonged induced coma that caused the press's antitrust muscles to waste away. Partly, it was because Judge Amit Mehta was comically deferential to Google's demands for secrecy about the trial and its exhibits, which added complexity and obscurity to the proceedings. Despite this, the DoJ prevailed, and Mehta ruled that "Google is a monopolist, and it has acted as one to maintain its monopoly." Now, Google faces break-up, and Trump's DoJ has confirmed that it will seek nothing less:

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/07/technology/trump-google-search-antitrust.html

The Biden administration may have been run by a president who'd spent his career kowtowing to giant, predatory corporations, but the left of the Democratic coalition forced him to install the most skilled and aggressive antitrust enforcers in generations:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/04/10/solidarity-forever-2/#oligarchism

They racked up an impressive series of wins, but too many of their cases were unfinished when the Democrats lost the election through a series of unforced errors that have left the country – and the world – teetering on the brink of a whole Bronze Age prophesy's worth of omnishambolic polycrises. There are so many important and good things imperiled by the Mad King presidency, and the DOJ and FTC's groundbreaking antitrust cases are certainly among them.

In some ways, this is normal. Vicious, criminal corporate bosses have long employed a delay/deny/defer strategy to draw out the antitrust cases against them, betting that a change in government will let them off the hook. This worked for Amway, which drew out its FTC prosecution for being a pyramid scheme until Richard Nixon resigned and was replaced by Gerry Ford, who had been the congressman to Amway founders Jay Van Andel and Rich DeVos. Ford ordered the FTC to let Amway off, so the FTC crafted the "Amway rule," which defines a list of of ruinously exploitative and dishonest tactics that are nevertheless legal. Every pyramid scheme since has been designed to fit within the confines of this rule. Whenever you hear from an old classmate hoping to sell you "leadership coaching," essential oils, tights, or any other gewgaw, know that they are the progeny of Gerry Ford and the Amway rule.

This delaying tactic also works for antitrust. When the DoJ sued IBM for its monopoly tactics, the company spent billions procuring delays. The case lasted for 12 years, from 1970-1982, and in each of those 12 years, IBM spent more on outside counsel to fight the US government than the DoJ spent on all the lawyers fighting all the antitrust cases in the country. They called it "antitrust's Vietnam," and (unlike the actual Vietnam war) it paid off. After Reagan was elected, he ordered the DoJ to let IBM off the hook, and the company lived to monopolize another day.

Microsoft pulled off this gambit too, drawing out the proceedings and appeals after it was convicted of illegal monopolization. They delayed the process until GW Bush was elected, and then Dubya ordered his enforcers to drop their opposition to Microsoft's appeal, and the company got off scot free.

So the big question now is, "Will Trump let Facebook walk?" There's not really any question that Facebook is guilty as hell, but Trump is practitioner of "boss politics." He's made it clear that, guilty or not, he is willing to protect you if you suck up to him. He's created several channels that corporations and individuals can bribe him: there's the Trump memecoin, a virtual tipjar for the Oval Office. There's his bizarre gambit of suing companies he wishes to demand fealty from (like Disney), inviting the companies settle the suits for tens of millions of dollars more than is reasonable, as a way to legally shuffle eight-figure bribes into the president's personal bank account.

Appropriately enough, Trump inaugurated his bribery program with his inauguration, soliciting million dollar "donations" to the inauguration fund from corporate leaders seeking favors from his government. Big Tech bosses – including Zuck – broke all land-speed records in the race for their checkbooks. But Trump isn't an "honest politician" (in the Heinlein sense of "he stays bought"). Last week, Trump lopped $733 billion off Apple's market cap, which was a hell of a way to thank CEO Tim Cook for his $1m "donation."

Zuck's got other ways to bribe Trump, of course. His pivot-to-culture-war-bullshit announcement – in which he declared an end to Meta's "feminine" use of fact checkers and moderation policies – was a naked gift to Trump, a guarantee that Trump and his henchmen could lie about anything from Haitians eating dogs to gay barbers being members of fearsome international terrorist gangs without threat of moderation or correction on Meta's platforms. For a compulsive liar like Trump, any relaxation of fact checking is a naked bribe:

https://www.lemonde.fr/en/economy/article/2025/01/12/mark-zuckerberg-wants-more-masculine-energy-and-less-diversity-policy_6736961_19.html

So, will Trump's FTC take Facebook down? It's hard to say. On the one hand, Trump claims to have fired the two Democratic FTC commissioners, Alvaro Bedoya and Rebecca Slaughter. A unanimous Supreme Court ruling makes it clear that the president doesn't have the legal authority to fire FTC commissioners without cause, and Bedoya and Slaughter still consider themselves to be on the job, though they've been locked out of the building and their email:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humphrey%27s_Executor_v._United_States

The weak GOP rump on the Commission are far from the best America has to offer. On his first day, Trump FTC Chair Andrew Ferguson killed a swathe of investigations and enforcement actions, walking away from the FTC's fights on things like "surveillance pricing" and "predatory pricing." In their place, Ferguson instituted a snitch-line where FTC employees could rat each other out for "wokeness":

https://prospect.org/politics/2025-01-24-executive-action-reaction-day-4/

But despite this, Ferguson has also indicated that he will selectively carry on the unprecedented work of Biden's FTC. For example, he affirmed that his FTC would continue to use the Biden era merger guidelines, which put far stricter limits on corporate mergers than we've seen since the 1980s. And he's publicly declared that he will fight Meta to the bitter end, praising the FTC lawyers on the case as "some of the best" in the agency:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-03-17/ftc-has-the-resources-to-take-on-big-tech-chairman-says

Writing for Big Tech on Trial, antitrust litigator Brendan Benedict lays out the stakes and odds in the case:

https://www.bigtechontrial.com/p/zuckerberg-on-the-stand-the-trial

One thing is clear from Benedict's excellent, comprehensive piece: there is a lot of extremely damning evidence against Meta. Some of this evidence comes from company insiders, like the whistleblower Sarah Wynn-Williams, whose tell-all memoir of her decade running Facebook's foreign policy team is filled with stomach churning revelations about top management's deliberate, ugly, vicious disregard for its users and the world:

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250391230/carelesspeople/

Meta did Wynn-Williams a huge favor by forcing her into arbitration and securing a legally binding order requiring her to cease publicly commenting on her book, a move that triggered massive, worldwide interest in her book (it's why I picked it up!). This, in turn, led to Wynn-Williams being invited to testify before Congress, where her revelations about Zuckerberg's shameless, endless sucking up to the Chinese government and Xi Jinping caught the interest of Trumpland stalwarts like Josh Hawley and Chuck Grassley:

https://www.techpolicy.press/transcript-former-exec-sarah-wynnwilliams-testifies-on-facebooks-courtship-of-china/

Assuming this political will persists, Trump's FTC will have to prove that Meta deliberately set out to create and maintain a monopoly. In this regard, they will be greatly aided by the best possible witness for the prosecution: Mark Zuckerberg and his giant, flapping fucking mouth. Zuckerberg has repeatedly, explicitly confessed, in writing, in economic and legal terms, to pursuing a growth strategy based on blatantly illegal anticompetitive actions. As Careless People makes clear, Zuck is an arrogant, out-of-touch crank who cannot stop tripping over his own dick.

The first hurdle the FTC will have to clear is the "relevant market" question. For a company to be a monopolist, it has to dominate a given sector. So what's Meta's sector? In its courtroom filings, Meta claims that it competes with the entire internet and on that basis, it is a minor player indeed. Market definition is a thorny problem in Big Tech antitrust cases, because the companies are such sprawling conglomerates that they can claim that they compete with just about everyone:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/12/10/borked/#zucked

But those claims are greatly undermined when the company itself contradicts them, in writing. Back in 2011, Facebook told advertisers that it was "now 95% of all social media in the US."

Zuckerberg – the company's founder and CEO, who controls a majority of its voting stock – then proceeded to pen a series of memos affirming the company's deliberate monopolization strategy. For example, in justifying his decision to purchase Instagram – a company with 12 employees – for $1 billion, Zuckerberg described how "network effects" would keep Facebook from competing with Insta, so he planned on buying the company to capture those network effects and create a market where competitors' "new products won’t get much traction."

Other memos describe the company's deliberate plans to create high "switching costs" to make customers' departure as painful as possible, ensuring that companies with better products will struggle to attract users:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/08/28/talking-hard-work-blues/#hostage-takers

As if that wasn't enough, Zuck sent another memo contrasting Google+ with Instagram, writing, "One thing about startups though is you can often acquire them. I think that is a good outcome for everyone." This was just a restatement of Zuck's longstanding – and again, written – rule of business, "It is better to buy than to compete."

Things are not looking good for Meta. Having failed in a series of increasingly desperate maneuvers to get the case dismissed, the company has fallen back on gambits like writing Trump a check for a million bucks – and hiring Mark Hansen, the trial judge's former clerk, as its courtroom counsel.

Meta is a repeat offender. In 2019, Facebook paid the largest-ever corporate penalty of any kind, $5 billion, for lying about its users' privacy. The reason that settlement was so large? The company had already admitted to lying about user privacy and had made a legally binding promise not to do it again (they did it again) (and again) (and again).

Wynn-Williams called her book "Careless People," but there's plenty of evidence that Zuckerberg's offenses are deliberate, not carelessness. That evidence comes straight from Zuck's own keyboard, in memos where (for example) he discusses "using M&A to build a competitive moat around us on mobile and ads…[let's] spend $1-2 billion over the next couple of years on acquisitions."

Early in Facebook's history, Zuckerberg gave a speech explaining that he didn't want to sell Facebook because "Having media corporations owned by conglomerates is just not an attractive idea to me." Apparently it got more attractive after Zuck started to buy companies by the bushel.

This coincided with Meta increasing both the "ad-load" and the "unconnected posts" (boosted content from accounts you don't follow) in its products. Meta doesn't charge its users money, it charges them attention (which it then sells to advertisers and publishers) The (attentional) price of using Meta products has skyrocketed, at the expense of quality – a textbook proof of monopolization.

The timing of the release of Careless People and the trial couldn't be better (for us – not Meta!). I'm in the middle of Careless People right now (look for my review soon), and I agree with the Trashfuture panel who talked about how validating it was to have my longstanding suspicions that Facebook's many catastrophic blunders had to be the result of a deliberate decision to trade its users', customers' and society's wellbeing for its own profits:

https://www.podbean.com/ep/pb-3c2y8-1879998

Much has been made of Facebook's role in multiple genocides, starting with the Rohinga genocide in Myanmar. The company's maneuvers since then are a mix of Wynn-Williams's "carelessness" and actual malice. Facebook's traumatized moderators call themselves the company's "tonsils" – a sacrificial organ whose role is to absorb pathogens and protect the body corporate:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/19/tonsilitis/#mod-traum

Meanwhile, the company touts its laughably bad "genocide filters":

https://pluralistic.net/2022/03/23/false-genocide-negative/#metacrap

Even as it bullies and threatens watchdogs that monitor its moderation systems:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/11/20/sovkitsch/#adobserver

Facebook is a company that spent most of its history in a race to become too big to jail, seeking to shape regulations to keep smaller companies from growing to be competitive threats. This is why Zuckerberg has been such a vocal critic of Section 230, a law that people mistakenly view as a gift to Big Tech:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/03/25/facebook-has-a-facebook-problem/#played-for-zuckers

The company has curried favor with the world's dictators, creating a wave of "Facebook politicians" primarily drawn from the far right, including the brutal dictator of Cambodia:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/25/nationalize-moderna/#hun-sen

But in becoming too big to jail, the company also became too big to care (convenient for a firm whose executive ranks are filled with people who are manifestly lacking in any empathy). Thus the world's dominant social media platform has become a place where anyone who talks publicly about their cancer diagnosis will be bombarded with ads for snake-oil fake cancer cures that will drain their wallets and keep them from seeking life-saving therapy:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/07/13/youre-still-the-product/#targeting

Thus we have a company where insiders routinely use Meta's extensive commercial surveillance apparatus to casually stalk their romantic interests and anyone else they want to know more about:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/07/14/who-watches-the-zuckmen/#pecksniffs

Thus we have a company that systematically defrauded the entire media industry with its "pivot to video," creating a wave of bankruptcies in news organizations around the world, a mass extinction event we're still reeling from today (and then the company tried to do it again, with the disastrous "pivot to metaverse"):

https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/18/metaverse-means-pivot-to-video/

Thus we have a company that threatened to walk away from the EU before it would obey the trading bloc's privacy laws:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/09/22/uncivvl/#fb-v-eu

(Ironically, the company insists upon the utmost secrecy when it negotiates with regulators, because nothing is more important than (Meta's) privacy):

https://pluralistic.net/2021/01/27/viral-colonialism/#ico-schtum

Meta's own employees are clearly keenly aware of its toxic nature. It's not just Sarah Wynn-Williams: departing Facebookers' "badge posts" – where they publicly take stock of their careers at Facebook – are a litany of recriminations and regrets:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/12/12/fairy-use-tale/#badge-posts

How will this case go? Well, it's hard to say. The judge – James Boasberg – just rejected a bid by Meta to keep its exhibits secret from the press and the public, seemingly having learned a lesson from Mehta's mistakes in the Google case.

And Meta has undergone spasms of antitrust fervor, like when Apple cut off third-party commercial surveillance by mobile apps, even as Apple spied on its own customers to fuel targeted ads. This prompted Zuckerberg to go on the warpath, telling anyone who'd listen that Apple was a dangerous tech monopoly and that the government really ought to do something about it:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/08/29/chickenized-home-to-roost/#chickenizers-come-home-to-roost

Yup.

Hey look at this (permalink)

Either Settle Mars, or Save Earth https://kschroeder.substack.com/p/either-settle-mars-or-save-earth
Why do AI company logos look like buttholes? https://velvetshark.com/ai-company-logos-that-look-like-buttholes
Fintech founder charged with fraud after ‘AI’ shopping app found to be powered by humans in the Philippines https://techcrunch.com/2025/04/10/fintech-founder-charged-with-fraud-after-ai-shopping-app-found-to-be-powered-by-humans-in-the-philippines/ (h/t Slashdot)

Object permanence (permalink)

#20yrsago WIPO’s development agenda meeting notes https://web.archive.org/web/20050414181809/https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/archives/003509.php#003509

#20yrsago Humanist transhumanism: Citizen Cyborg https://memex.craphound.com/2005/04/11/humanist-transhumanism-citizen-cyborg/

#15yrsago William Gibson answers questions https://web.archive.org/web/20100406085837/https://williamgibsonbooks.com/blog/2010_04_01_archive.asp#2870745173546130026

#5yrsago RIP MAD's Mort Drucker https://pluralistic.net/2020/04/11/socialized-losses/#sorely-missed

#5yrsago Snowden warns of permanent pandemic surveillance https://pluralistic.net/2020/04/11/socialized-losses/#patriot-act-ii

#5yrsago "Job creators" are job annihilators https://pluralistic.net/2020/04/11/socialized-losses/#i-got-mine

#5yrsago RNC plans ex-cop/military voter intimidation squad https://pluralistic.net/2020/04/11/socialized-losses/#true-the-vote

#5yrsago PE companies that looted healthcare want billions in bailouts https://pluralistic.net/2020/04/11/socialized-losses/#socialized-losses

Upcoming appearances (permalink)

Pittsburgh: Picks and Shovels at White Whale Books, May 15
https://whitewhalebookstore.com/events/20250515
Pittsburgh: PyCon, May 16
https://us.pycon.org/2025/schedule/
PDX: Teardown 2025, Jun 20-22
https://www.crowdsupply.com/teardown/portland-2025
PDX: Picks and Shovels at Barnes and Noble, Jun 20
https://stores.barnesandnoble.com/event/9780062183697-0
London: How To Academy with Riley Quinn, Jul 1
https://howtoacademy.com/events/cory-doctorow-the-fight-against-the-big-tech-oligarchy/
Manchester: Picks and Shovels at Blackwell, Jul 2
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/an-evening-with-cory-doctorow-tickets-1308451968059
Manchester: Co-operatives UK Co-op Congress keynote, Jul 3
https://www.uk.coop/events-and-training/events-calendar/co-op-congress-2025-book-your-place
New Orleans: DeepSouthCon63, Oct 10-12, 2025
http://www.contraflowscifi.org/

Recent appearances (permalink)

Intelligent Machines (TWiT)
https://twit.tv/shows/intelligent-machines/episodes/814
The Political Orphanage
https://player.fm/series/the-political-orphanage/cory-doctorow-on-the-evils-of-copyright-law
Fire the unelected social media dictators (Al Jazeera Upfront)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KXa4DzhkUZ8

Latest books (permalink)

- Picks and Shovels: a sequel to "Red Team Blues," about the heroic era of the PC, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), February 2025 (https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865908/picksandshovels).
The Bezzle: a sequel to "Red Team Blues," about prison-tech and other grifts, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), February 2024 (the-bezzle.org). Signed, personalized copies at Dark Delicacies (https://www.darkdel.com/store/p3062/Available_Feb_20th%3A_The_Bezzle_HB.html#/).
"The Lost Cause:" a solarpunk novel of hope in the climate emergency, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), November 2023 (http://lost-cause.org). Signed, personalized copies at Dark Delicacies (https://www.darkdel.com/store/p3007/Pre-Order_Signed_Copies%3A_The_Lost_Cause_HB.html#/)
"The Internet Con": A nonfiction book about interoperability and Big Tech (Verso) September 2023 (http://seizethemeansofcomputation.org). Signed copies at Book Soup (https://www.booksoup.com/book/9781804291245).
"Red Team Blues": "A grabby, compulsive thriller that will leave you knowing more about how the world works than you did before." Tor Books http://redteamblues.com. Signed copies at Dark Delicacies (US): and Forbidden Planet (UK): https://forbiddenplanet.com/385004-red-team-blues-signed-edition-hardcover/.
"Chokepoint Capitalism: How to Beat Big Tech, Tame Big Content, and Get Artists Paid, with Rebecca Giblin", on how to unrig the markets for creative labor, Beacon Press/Scribe 2022 https://chokepointcapitalism.com
"Attack Surface": The third Little Brother novel, a standalone technothriller for adults. The Washington Post called it "a political cyberthriller, vigorous, bold and savvy about the limits of revolution and resistance." Order signed, personalized copies from Dark Delicacies https://www.darkdel.com/store/p1840/Available_Now%3A_Attack_Surface.html
"How to Destroy Surveillance Capitalism": an anti-monopoly pamphlet analyzing the true harms of surveillance capitalism and proposing a solution. https://onezero.medium.com/how-to-destroy-surveillance-capitalism-8135e6744d59?sk=f6cd10e54e20a07d4c6d0f3ac011af6b) (signed copies: https://www.darkdel.com/store/p2024/Available_Now%3A__How_to_Destroy_Surveillance_Capitalism.html)
"Little Brother/Homeland": A reissue omnibus edition with a new introduction by Edward Snowden: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250774583; personalized/signed copies here: https://www.darkdel.com/store/p1750/July%3A__Little_Brother_%26_Homeland.html
"Poesy the Monster Slayer" a picture book about monsters, bedtime, gender, and kicking ass. Order here: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781626723627. Get a personalized, signed copy here: https://www.darkdel.com/store/p2682/Corey_Doctorow%3A_Poesy_the_Monster_Slayer_HB.html#/.

Upcoming books (permalink)

Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It, Farrar, Straus, Giroux, October 7 2025
https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374619329/enshittification/
Unauthorized Bread: a middle-grades graphic novel adapted from my novella about refugees, toasters and DRM, FirstSecond, 2026
Enshittification, Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It (the graphic novel), Firstsecond, 2026
The Memex Method, Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 2026

Colophon (permalink)

Today's top sources:

Currently writing:

Enshittification: a nonfiction book about platform decay for Farrar, Straus, Giroux. Status: second pass edit underway (readaloud)
A Little Brother short story about DIY insulin PLANNING
Picks and Shovels, a Martin Hench noir thriller about the heroic era of the PC. FORTHCOMING TOR BOOKS FEB 2025

Latest podcast: Nimby and the D-Hoppers https://craphound.com/stories/2025/04/06/nimby-and-the-d-hoppers-2/

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