Safety Harms As Antitrust Injury

Updated: 2025.09.16 1M ago 3 sources
When platforms don’t charge users, monopoly power can manifest as degraded safety rather than higher prices. Courts and enforcers need tractable, auditable metrics for 'quality' harms—like child‑safety risk from recommender systems—to ground antitrust claims. — Treating safety degradation as a primary antitrust harm would realign tech enforcement with how dominant platforms actually injure consumers today.

Sources

FTC Probes Whether Ticketmaster Does Enough To Stop Resale Bots
BeauHD 2025.09.16 45% relevant
While not an antitrust case, the FTC’s investigation treats non‑price consumer harm from platform design/enforcement (bots enabling ticket hoarding/resale) as a core injury—akin to shifting enforcement toward quality/safety harms rather than prices.
Wyden Says Microsoft Flaws Led to Hack of US Hospital System
msmash 2025.09.10 78% relevant
Wyden urges the FTC to pursue Microsoft's 'gross cybersecurity negligence' after the Ascension hack, framing harm not as higher prices but degraded safety to critical infrastructure users caused by dominant platform defaults (Windows supporting RC4), aligning with the proposal to recognize safety degradation as a primary antitrust/consumer‑protection harm.
Tyrants of the Algorithm: Big Tech’s Corrosive Rule and Its Consequences
Matt Stoller 2025.08.20 100% relevant
Judge Jeb Boasberg deeming Instagram grooming‑recommendation exhibits 'ancillary' in the FTC v. Meta monopolization case.
← Back to All Ideas