#Digital marketing for authors

[nicholasandriani]

Milan Kundera: The Maestro of Symbiotic Five – Remembering a Literary Alchemist and Master of Utmost Seriousness and Utmost Lightness Remembering a Literary Alchemist and Master of Utmost Seriousness and Utmost Lightness 📖 Favorite Quotes by Milan Kundera 🖋️ • “The only way to leave a trace of our passage on Earth is art.” • “The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against…

[mostlysignssomeportents]

UK publishers suing Google for $17.4b over rigged ad markets

THIS WEEKEND (June 7–9), I'm in AMHERST, NEW YORK to keynote the 25th Annual Media Ecology Association Convention and accept the Neil Postman Award for Career Achievement in Public Intellectual Activity.

Look, no one wants to kick Big Tech to the curb more than I do, but, also: it's good that Google indexes the news so people can find it, and it's good that Facebook provides forums where people can talk about the news.

It's not news if you can't find it. It's not news if you can't talk about it. We don't call information you can't find or discuss "news" – we call it "secrets."

And yet, the most popular – and widely deployed – anti-Big Tech tactic promulgated by the news industry and supported by many of my fellow trustbusters is premised on making Big Tech pay to index the news and/or provide a forum to discuss news articles. These "news bargaining codes" (or, less charitably, "link taxes") have been mooted or introduced in the EU, France, Spain, Australia, and Canada. There are proposals to introduce these in the US (through the JCPA) and in California (the CJPA).

These US bills are probably dead on arrival, for reasons that can be easily understood by the Canadian experience with them. After Canada introduced Bill C-18 – its own news bargaining code – Meta did exactly what it had done in many other places where this had been tried: blocked all news from Facebook, Instagram, Threads, and other Meta properties.

This has been a disaster for the news industry and a disaster for Canadians' ability to discuss the news. Oh, it makes Meta look like assholes, too, but Meta is the poster child for "too big to care" and is palpably indifferent to the PR costs of this boycott.

Frustrated lawmakers are now trying to figure out what to do next. The most common proposal is to order Meta to carry the news. Canadians should be worried about this, because the next government will almost certainly be helmed by the far-right conspiratorialist culture warrior Pierre Poilievre, who will doubtless use this power to order Facebook to platform "news sites" to give prominence to Canada's rotten bushel of crypto-fascist (and openly fascist) "news" sites.

Americans should worry about this too. A Donald Trump 2028 presidency combined with a must-carry rule for news would see Trump's cabinet appointees deciding what is (and is not) news, and ordering large social media platforms to cram the Daily Caller (or, you know, the Daily Stormer) into our eyeballs.

But there's another, more fundamental reason that must-carry is incompatible with the American system: the First Amendment. The government simply can't issue a blanket legal order to platforms requiring them to carry certain speech. They can strongly encourage it. A court can order limited compelled speech (say, a retraction following a finding of libel). Under emergency conditions, the government might be able to compel the transmission of urgent messages. But there's just no way the First Amendment can be squared with a blanket, ongoing order issued by the government to communications platforms requiring them to reproduce, and make available, everything published by some collection of their favorite news outlets.

This might also be illegal in Canada, but it's harder to be definitive. The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms was enshrined in 1982, and Canada's Supreme Court is still figuring out what it means. Section Two of the Charter enshrines a free expression right, but it's worded in less absolute terms than the First Amendment, and that's deliberate. During the debate over the wording of the Charter, Canadian scholars and policymakers specifically invoked problems with First Amendment absolutism and tried to chart a middle course between strong protections for free expression and problems with the First Amendment's brook-no-exceptions language.

So maybe Canada's Supreme Court would find a must-carry order to Meta to be a violation of the Charter, but it's hard to say for sure. The Charter is both young and ambiguous, so it's harder to be definitive about what it would say about this hypothetical. But when it comes to the US and the First Amendment, that's categorically untrue. The US Constitution is centuries older than the Canadian Charter, and the First Amendment is extremely definitive, and there are reams of precedent interpreting it. The JPCA and CJPA are totally incompatible with the US Constitution. Passing them isn't as silly as passing a law declaring that Pi equals three or that water isn't wet, but it's in the neighborhood.

But all that isn't to say that the news industry shouldn't be attacking Big Tech. Far from it. Big Tech compulsively steals from the news!

But what Big Tech steals from the news isn't content.

It's money.

Big Tech steals money from the news. Take social media: when a news outlet invests in building a subscriber base on a social media platform, they're giving that platform a stick to beat them with. The more subscribers you have on social media, the more you'll be willing to pay to reach those subscribers, and the more incentive there is for the platform to suppress the reach of your articles unless you pay to "boost" your content.

This is plainly fraudulent. When I sign up to follow a news outlet on a social media site, I'm telling the platform to show me the things the news outlet publishes. When the platform uses that subscription as the basis for a blackmail plot, holding my desire to read the news to ransom, they are breaking their implied promise to me to show me the things I asked to see:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/06/save-news-we-need-end-end-web

This is stealing money from the news. It's the definition of an "unfair method of competition." Article 5 of the Federal Trade Commission Act gives the FTC the power to step in and ban this practice, and they should:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/10/the-courage-to-govern/#whos-in-charge

Big Tech also steals money from the news via the App Tax: the 30% rake that the mobile OS duopoly (Apple/Google) requires for every in-app purchase (Apple/Google also have policies that punish app vendors who take you to the web to make payments without paying the App Tax). 30% out of every subscriber dollar sent via an app is highway robbery! By contrast, the hyperconcentrated, price-gouging payment processing cartel charges 2-5% – about a tenth of the Big Tech tax. This is Big Tech stealing money from the news:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/06/save-news-we-must-open-app-stores

Finally, Big Tech steals money by monopolizing the ad market. The Google-Meta ad duopoly takes 51% out of every ad-dollar spent. The historic share going to advertising "intermediaries" is 10-15%. In other words, Google/Meta cornered the market on ads and then tripled the bite they were taking out of publishers' advertising revenue. They even have an illegal, collusive arrangement to rig this market, codenamed "Jedi Blue":

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jedi_Blue

There's two ways to unrig the ad market, and we should do both of them.

First, we should trustbust both Google and Meta and force them to sell off parts of their advertising businesses. Currently, both Google and Meta operate a "full stack" of ad services. They have an arm that represents advertisers buying space for ads. Another arm represents publishers selling space to advertisers. A third arm operates the marketplace where these sales take place. All three arms collect fees. On top of that: Google/Meta are both publishers and advertisers, competing with their own customers!

This is as if you were in court for a divorce and you discovered that the same lawyer representing your soon-to-be ex was also representing you…while serving as the judge…and trying to match with you both on Tinder. It shouldn't surprise you if at the end of that divorce, the court ruled that the family home should go to the lawyer.

So yeah, we should break up ad-tech:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/05/save-news-we-must-shatter-ad-tech

Also: we should ban surveillance advertising. Surveillance advertising gives ad-tech companies a permanent advantage over publishers. Ad-tech will always know more about readers' behavior than publishers do, because Big Tech engages in continuous, highly invasive surveillance of every internet user in the world. Surveillance ads perform a little better than "content-based ads" (ads sold based on the content of a web-page, not the behavior of the person looking at the page), but publishers will always know more about their content than ad-tech does. That means that even if content-based ads command a slightly lower price than surveillance ads, a much larger share of that payment will go to publishers:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/05/save-news-we-must-ban-surveillance-advertising

Banning surveillance advertising isn't just good business, it's good politics. The potential coalition for banning surveillance ads is everyone who is harmed by commercial surveillance. That's a coalition that's orders of magnitude larger than the pool of people who merely care about fairness in the ad/news industries. It's everyone who's worried about their grandparents being brainwashed on Facebook, or their teens becoming anorexic because of Instagram. It includes people angry about deepfake porn, and people angry about Black Lives Matter protesters' identities being handed to the cops by Google (see also: Jan 6 insurrectionists).

It also includes everyone who discovers that they're paying higher prices because a vendor is using surveillance data to determine how much they'll pay – like when McDonald's raises the price of your "meal deal" on your payday, based on the assumption that you will spend more when your bank account is at its highest monthly level:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/06/05/your-price-named/#privacy-first-again

Attacking Big Tech for stealing money is much smarter than pretending that the problem is Big Tech stealing content. We want Big Tech to make the news easy to find and discuss. We just want them to stop pocketing 30 cents out of every subscriber dollar and 51 cents out of ever ad dollar, and ransoming subscribers' social media subscriptions to extort publishers.

And there's amazing news on this front: a consortium of UK web-publishers called Ad Tech Collective Action has just triumphed in a high-stakes proceeding, and can now go ahead with a suit against Google, seeking damages of GBP13.6b ($17.4b) for the rigged ad-tech market:

https://www.reuters.com/technology/17-bln-uk-adtech-lawsuit-against-google-can-go-ahead-tribunal-rules-2024-06-05/

The ruling, from the Competition Appeal Tribunal, paves the way for a frontal assault on the thing Big Tech actually steals from publishers: money, not content.

This is exactly what publishing should be doing. Targeting the method by which tech steals from the news is a benefit to all kinds of news organizations, including the independent, journalist-owned publishers that are doing the best news work today. These independents do not have the same interests as corporate news, which is dominated by hedge funds and private equity raiders, who have spent decades buying up and hollowing out news outlets, and blaming the resulting decline in readership and profits on Craiglist.

You can read more about Big Finance's raid on the news in Margot Susca's Hedged: How Private Investment Funds Helped Destroy American Newspapers and Undermine Democracy:

https://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/?id=p087561

You can also watch/listen to Adam Conover's excellent interview with Susca:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N21YfWy0-bA

Frankly, the looters and billionaires who bought and gutted our great papers are no more interested in the health of the news industry or democracy than Big Tech is. We should care about the news and the workers who produce the news, not the profits of the hedge-funds that own the news. An assault on Big Tech's monetary theft levels the playing field, making it easier for news workers and indies to compete directly with financialized news outlets and billionaire playthings, by letting indies keep more of every ad-dollar and more of every subscriber-dollar – and to reach their subscribers without paying ransom to social media.

Ending monetary theft – rather than licensing news search and discussion – is something that workers are far more interested in than their bosses. Any time you see workers and their bosses on the same side as a fight against Big Tech, you should look more closely. Bosses are not on their workers' side. If bosses get more money out of Big Tech, they will not share those gains with workers unless someone forces them to.

That's where antitrust comes in. Antitrust is designed to strike at power, and enforcers have broad authority to blunt the power of corporate juggernauts. Remember Article 5 of the FTC Act, the one that lets the FTC block "unfair methods of competition?" FTC Chair Lina Khan has proposed using it to regulate training AI, specifically to craft rules that address the labor and privacy issues with AI:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3mh8Z5pcJpg

This is an approach that can put creative workers where they belong, in a coalition with other workers, rather than with their bosses. The copyright approach to curbing AI training is beloved of the same media companies that are eagerly screwing their workers. If we manage to make copyright – a transferrable right that a worker can be forced to turn over their employer – into the system that regulates AI training, it won't stop training. It'll just trigger every entertainment company changing their boilerplate contract so that creative workers have to sign over their AI rights or be shown the door:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/13/spooky-action-at-a-close-up/#invisible-hand

Then those same entertainment and news companies will train AI models and try to fire most of their workers and slash the pay of the remainder using those models' output. Using copyright to regulate AI training makes changes to who gets to benefit from workers' misery, shifting some of our stolen wages from AI companies to entertainment companies. But it won't stop them from ruining our lives.

By contrast, focusing on actual labor rights – say, through an FTCA 5 rulemaking – has the potential to protect those rights from all parties, and puts us on the same side as call-center workers, train drivers, radiologists and anyone else whose wages are being targeted by AI companies and their customers.

Policy fights are a recurring monkey's paw nightmare in which we try to do something to fight corruption and bullying, only to be outmaneuvered by corrupt bullies. Making good policy is no guarantee of a good outcome, but it sure helps – and good policy starts with targeting the thing you want to fix. If we're worried that news is being financially starved by Big Tech, then we should go after the money, not the links.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/06/06/stealing-money-not-content/#content-free

[j-esbian]

i’ve gotta admit that, 4 years in, im still real fucking tired of people who act like Everyone In the World Had To Stay Home 24/7 when the covid pandemic started, bc as best as i can tell, that was mostly like. white collar workers and students

[qbopublishing]

Nicolas Bahamon, 11 year-old author

Click, Post, Succeed Social Media and Digital Marketing for Kids.

Nicolas Bahamon is a talented and well-rounded individual. Writing a book at such a young age is a remarkable accomplishment, and it's even more impressive that it's about social media and digital marketing. It's not often we see kids taking an interest in these topics. 

Being a soccer player, a violinist, and practicing jiujitsu, Nicolas seems to have an adventurous and diverse set of interests. It's wonderful to see someone exploring multiple areas of interest and developing a wide range of skills. Soccer requires physical agility, teamwork, and perseverance, while playing the violin demands discipline, dedication, and musical ability. Jiu-jitsu, on the other hand, requires mental and physical strength, flexibility, and strategic thinking.

Nicolas is shaping up to be a true renaissance kid! It's exciting to think about the path he might take in the future, perhaps even combining his different passions or exploring new ones.

With its release on November 24, 2023, 'Click, Post, Succeed: Social Media and Digital Marketing for Kids' is now available for purchase. Youcan find the book on Amazon, where readers can embark on this enlightening journey and gain insights into the world of social media and digital marketing. 

Click, Post, Succeed Social Media and Digital Marketing for Kids https://a.co/d/9dYTyGF

Connect with Nicolas Bahamon

www.chainzd360.com www.book.chainzd360.com www.youtube.com/@chainZd www.instagram.com/chainZd360 www.facebook.com/chainZd360

[koobruk]

Discover the importance of backlinks in your SEO strategy. Learn how they improve search engine rankings, increase website authority, and drive referral traffic. Explore effective strategies to build a robust backlink profile. Contact Koobr today to elevate your SEO efforts with high-quality backlinks.

[transcriptioncity]

Transcription Services for Content Creation and Marketing

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[digital-marketing-chronicles]

Why Domain Authority Score Checker is Important for Your SEO Strategy

In the world of search engine optimization (SEO), staying ahead of the competition and maintaining a strong online presence requires understanding various metrics that influence your website's performance. One such critical metric is Domain Authority (DA). Developed by Moz, DA is a predictive score that helps you gauge the likelihood of your website ranking on search engine result pages (SERPs). A Domain Authority score checker is an essential tool for any digital marketer or website owner. Here's why:

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Importance of Using a Domain Authority Score Checker

Benchmarking Against Competitors A DA score checker allows you to compare your website’s authority with that of your competitors. By understanding where you stand relative to others in your industry, you can set realistic goals and develop strategies to improve your ranking. This competitive analysis is vital for staying ahead in the SEO game.

Tracking SEO Progress Monitoring your DA score over time helps you track the effectiveness of your SEO efforts. If your DA score is increasing, it indicates that your strategies are working, and your website is gaining authority. Conversely, if your score is stagnant or decreasing, it might be time to reassess your SEO tactics.

Identifying Link Building Opportunities DA score checkers can help you identify high-authority websites that you can target for backlink opportunities. By focusing on acquiring backlinks from sites with high DA scores, you can boost your own website's authority more effectively. Quality backlinks are a crucial component of any successful SEO strategy.

Improving Website Performance A higher DA score generally correlates with better search engine rankings, which leads to increased organic traffic. By regularly checking your DA score, you can ensure that your website is on the right track to attract more visitors. Increased traffic often translates to more leads, sales, and overall business growth.

Evaluating the Impact of SEO Changes When you implement new SEO strategies or make significant changes to your website, a DA score checker helps you measure the impact of these changes. If your DA score improves after implementing a new tactic, it’s a good sign that the change was beneficial. This data-driven approach allows for continuous optimization of your SEO efforts.

Guiding Content Strategy High-quality, relevant content is a key factor in improving DA. By analyzing your DA score, you can identify which types of content attract more backlinks and engagement. This insight can guide your content strategy, ensuring you produce material that boosts your site’s authority and appeals to your audience.

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When choosing a DA score checker, look for the following features to ensure you get the most out of the tool:

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Conclusion

A Domain Authority score checker is a vital tool for any business or individual looking to improve their SEO strategy. By providing insights into your website's ranking potential, helping you benchmark against competitors, and guiding your link-building and content strategies, a DA score checker ensures you are making informed decisions to boost your online presence. Incorporate this tool into your regular SEO audits to stay ahead in the competitive digital landscape and drive your website towards higher search engine rankings and greater success.

[rhythmicreverie]

In shadows where secrets hide, A figure emerges from the past, An enigma cloaked in mystery, Whispers of old crimes and tragedy. A family shattered, hearts broken, By betrayal, lies, and deceit, Fractured trust can never mend, As whispers echo through time. Now a stranger in their midst, The past returns to claim its price, In darkened rooms and quiet streets, A truth that chills the very bones. In 100 words or less, a tale of family, mystery, and suspense is spun, A story of shadows and lies, That haunts the hearts of those who've lost and gained.

[blaksheepcreative]

🚨 Breaking News for SEOs! 🚨 Uncover the secrets of Google's ranking algorithm with insights from the recent document leak. Discover how to optimize your SEO strategies effectively and boost your rankings! 📈 🔍 Read More: Google Search Document Leak: SEO Secrets Revealed #SEO #DigitalMarketing #GoogleSearch #SEOTips #Marketing #BlakSheepCreative

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Convicted monopolist prevented from re-offending

This Sunday (Apr 30) at 2PM, I’ll be at the San Francisco Public Library with my new book, Red Team Blues, hosted by Annalee Newitz.

In blocking Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision-Blizzard, the UK Competition and Markets Authority has made history: they have stepped in to prevent a notorious, convicted monopolist from seizing control over a nascent, important market (cloud gaming), ignoring the transparent, self-serving lies Microsoft told about the merger:

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/644939aa529eda000c3b0525/Microsoft_Activision_Final_Report_.pdf

If you’d like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here’s a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/27/convicted-monopolist/#microsquish

Cloud gaming isn’t really a thing right now, but it might be. That was Microsoft’s bet, anyway, as it plonked down $69b to acquire Activision-Blizzard — a company that shouldn’t exist, having been formed out of a string of grossly anticompetitive mergers that were waved through.

Activision-Blizzard is a poster-child for the failures of antitrust law over the past 40 years, a period in which monopolies were tolerated and even encouraged by the agencies that were supposed to prevent monopolies from forming and break up the ones that slipped past their defenses. Activision-Blizzard is a giant, moribund company whose “innovation” consists of endless sequels to its endless sequels, whose market power allows it to crush its workers while starving competitors of market oxygen, ensuring that gamers and game workers have nowhere else to go.

Microsoft is another one of those poster-children, of course. After being convicted of antitrust violations, the company dragged out the legal process until George W Bush stole the presidency and decided not to pursue them any further, letting them wriggle off the hook.

The antitrust rough ride tamed Microsoft…for a while. The company did not use the same dirty tricks to destroy, say, Google as it had used against Netscape. But in the years since, Microsoft has demonstrated that it regrets nothing about its illegal conduct and has no hesitations about repeating that conduct.

This is especially true of cloud computing, where Microsoft is using exclusivity deals and illegal “tying” (forcing customers to use a product they don’t want in order to use a product they desire) to lock customers into its cloud offering:

https://www.reuters.com/technology/google-says-microsofts-cloud-practices-anti-competitive-slams-deals-with-rivals-2023-03-30/

Locking customers into Microsoft’s cloud also means locking customers into Microsoft surveillance. Microsoft’s cloud products spy in ways that are extreme even by the industry’s very low standards. Office 365 isn’t just a version of Office that you never stop paying for — it’s a version of Office that never stops spying on you, and selling the data to your competitors:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/11/25/the-peoples-amazon/#clippys-revenge

Microsoft’s Activision acquisition was entirely cloud-driven. The company clearly believes the pundits who say that the future of gaming is in the cloud: rather than playing on a device with the power to handle all the fancy graphics and physics, you’ll use a low-powered device that streams you video from a server in the cloud that’s doing all the heavy lifting.

If cloud gaming comes true (a big if, considering the dismal state of broadband, another sector that’s been enshittified and starved by monopolists), then Microsoft owning the Xbox platform, the Windows OS, and the Game Pass subscription service already poses a huge risk that the company could grow to dominate the sector. Throw in Activision-Blizzard and the future starts to look very grim indeed.

It’s a nakedly anticompetitive merger. As Mark Zuckerberg unwisely wrote in an internal memo, “it is better to buy than to compete.”

(These guys can not stop incriminating themselves. FTX got mocked for its group-chat called “Wirefraud,” but come on, every tech baron has a folder on their desktop called “mens rea” full of files with names like “premeditation-11.docx.”)

Naturally, the FTC sued to stop the merger (after 40 years, the FTC has undergone a revolution under chair Lina Khan and is actually protecting the American people from monopoly):

https://www.vice.com/en/article/ake97g/ftc-sues-to-block-microsoft-acquisition-of-call-of-duty-publisher-activision-blizzard

The FTC was always in for an uphill battle. “Cloud gaming,” the market it is seeking to defend from monopolization, doesn’t really exist yet, and enforcing US antitrust law against monopolies over existent things is hard enough, thanks to all those federal judges who attended luxury junkets where billionaire-friendly “economists” taught them that monopolies were “efficient”:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/08/13/post-bork-era/#manne-down

But the FTC isn’t the only cop on the beat. Antitrust is experiencing a global revival, from the EU to China, Canada to Australia, and South Korea to the UK, where the Competition and Markets Authority is kicking all kinds of arse (see also: “ass”). The CMA is arguably the most technically proficient competition regulator in the world, thanks to the Digital Markets Unit (DMU), a force of over 50 skilled engineers who produce intensely detailed, amazingly sharp reports on how tech monopolies work and what to do about them.

The CMA is very interested in cloud gaming. Late last year, they released a long, detailed report into the state of browser engines on mobile phones, seeking public comment on whether these should be regulated to encourage web-apps (which can be installed without going through an app store) and to pave the way for cloud gaming:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/13/kitbashed/#app-store-tax

The CMA is especially keen on collaboration with its overseas colleagues. Its annual conference welcome enforcers from all over the world, and its Digital Markets Unit is particularly important in these joint operations. You see, while Parliament appropriated funds to pay those 50+ engineers, it never passed the secondary legislation needed to grant the DMU any enforcement powers. But the DMU isn’t just sitting around waiting for Parliament to act — rather, it produces these incredible investigations and enforcement roadmaps, and releases them publicly.

This turns out to be very important in the EU, where the European Commission has very broad enforcement powers, but very little technical staff. The Commission and the DMU have become something of a joint venture, with the DMU setting up the cases and the EU knocking them down. It’s a very heartwarming post-Brexit story of cross-Channel collaboration!

And so Microsoft’s acquisition is dead (I mean, they say they’ll appeal, but that’ll take months, and the deal with Activision will have expired in the meantime, and Microsoft will have to pay Activision a $3 billion break-up fee):

https://mattstoller.substack.com/p/big-tech-blocked-microsoft-stopped

This is good news for gaming, for games workers, and for gamers. Microsoft was and is a rotten company, even by the low standards of tech giants. Despite the sweaters and the charity (or, rather, “charity”) Bill Gates is a hardcore ideologue who wants to get rid of public education and all other public goods:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/13/public-interest-pharma/#gates-foundation

Microsoft has a knack for nurturing and promoting absolutely terrible people, like former CEO Steve Ballmer, who has played a starring role in Propublica’s IRS Files, thanks to the bizarre tax-scams he’s pioneered:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/24/tax-loss-harvesting/#mego

So yeah, this is good news: Microsoft should have been broken up 25 years ago, and we should not allow it to buy its way to ongoing dominance today. But it’s also good news because of the nature of the enforcement: the CMA defended an emerging market, to prevent monopolization.

That’s really important: monopolies are durable. Once a monopoly takes root, it becomes too big to fail and too big to jail. That’s how IBM outspend the entire Department of Justice Antitrust Division every year for twelve years during a period they call “Antitrust’s Vietnam”:

https://onezero.medium.com/jam-to-day-46b74d5b1da4

Preventing monopoly formation is infinitely preferable to breaking up monopolies after they form. That’s why the golden age of trustbusting (basically, the period starting with FDR and ending with Reagan) saw action against “incipient” monopolies, where big companies bought lots of little companies.

When we stopped worrying about incipiency, we set the stage for today’s Private Equity “rollups,” where every funeral home, or veterinarian, or dentists’ practice is bought out by a giant PE fund, who ruthlessly enshittify it, slashing wages, raising prices, stiffing suppliers and reducing quality:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/16/schumpeterian-terrorism/#deliberately-broken

Limiting antitrust enforcement to policing monopolies after they form has been an absolute failure. The CMA knows that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure — indeed, we all do.

From Apr 26–28, Barnes and Noble is offering a 25% discount on preorders for my upcoming novels (use discount code PREORDER25): The Lost Cause (Nov 2023) and The Bezzle (Red Team Blues #2) (Feb 2024).

Catch me on tour with Red Team Blues in Mountain View, Berkeley, San Francisco, Portland, Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto, DC, Gaithersburg, Oxford, Hay, Manchester, Nottingham, London, and Berlin!

[Image ID: A promotional image from the Call of Duty franchise featuring a soldier in a skull-mask gaiter giving a thumbs up on a battlefield. It has been altered so that he is giving a thumbs-down gesture. Superimposed on the image is a modified Microsoft 'Clippy' popup; Clippy's speech-bubble has been filled with grawlix characters; the two dialog-box options both read 'No.']

Image: Microsoft, Activision (fair use)

[shannonellablog]

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[jolenes-book-journey]

What Activities Will Help You Gain More Readers

What Activities Will Help You Gain More Readers? Why do we have to do this Digital Marketing Stuff? Yes, I believe that our readers should magically find us, purchase our books and then give us glowing reviews. Sadly, that is not going to happen. Regardless of your level of experience as a writer, connecting with readers is the ultimate goal. In today’s competitive literary world, it is crucial…

[booksncalm]

Marketing Agency New Bern: Smart Strategies: For Companies Determined to Grow and Prosper

Is your business struggling to reach its full potential? Are you looking for innovative ways to expand your reach and increase your revenue? Look no further than Marketing Agency New Bern! Our team of experts is dedicated to helping companies like yours thrive in today’s competitive market. With our proven methods and smart strategies, we can transform your business and propel it towards…

[catsmeow39]

Marketing Agency New Bern: Smart Strategies: For Companies Determined to Grow and Prosper

Is your business struggling to reach its full potential? Are you looking for innovative ways to expand your reach and increase your revenue? Look no further than Marketing Agency New Bern! Our team of experts is dedicated to helping companies like yours thrive in today’s competitive market. With our proven methods and smart strategies, we can transform your business and propel it towards…