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Reining in Digital Competition to No Good End: Will AICOA and OAMA Rise from the Grave?

Daniel Gilman & Lazar Radic —  8 March 2023 — Leave a comment

The 117th Congress closed out without a floor vote on either of the major pieces of antitrust legislation introduced in both chambers: the American Innovation and Choice Online Act (AICOA) and the Open Apps Market Act (OAMA). But it was evident at yesterday’s hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee’s antitrust subcommittee that at least some advocates—both in academia and among the committee leadership—hope to raise those bills from the dead.

Of the committee’s five carefully chosen witnesses, only New York University School of Law’s Daniel Francis appeared to appreciate the competitive risks posed by AICOA and OAMA—noting, among other things, that the bills’ failure to distinguish between harm to competition and harm to certain competitors was a critical defect.

Yale School of Management’s Fiona Scott Morton acknowledged that ideal antitrust reforms were not on the table, and appeared open to amendments. But she also suggested that current antitrust standards were deficient and, without much explanation or attention to the bills’ particulars, that AICOA and OAMA were both steps in the right direction.

Subcommittee Chair Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), who sponsored AICOA in the last Congress, seems keen to reintroduce it without modification. In her introductory remarks, she lamented the power, wealth (if that’s different), and influence of Big Tech in helping to sink her bill last year.

Apparently, firms targeted by anticompetitive legislation would rather they weren’t. Folks outside the Beltway should sit down for this: it seems those firms hire people to help them explain, to Congress and the public, both the fact that they don’t like the bills and why. The people they hire are called “lobbyists.” It appears that, sometimes, that strategy works or is at least an input into a process that sometimes ends, more or less, as they prefer. Dirty pool, indeed. 

There are, of course, other reasons why AICOA and OAMA might have stalled. Had they been enacted, it’s very likely that they would have chilled innovation, harmed consumers, and provided a level of regulatory discretion that would have been very hard, if not impossible, to dial back. If reintroduced and enacted, the bills would be more likely to “rein in” competition and innovation in the American digital sector and, specifically, targeted tech firms’ ability to deliver innovative products and services to tens of millions of (hitherto very satisfied) consumers.

Our colleagues at the International Center for Law & Economics (ICLE) and its affiliated scholars, among others, have explained why. For a selected bit of self-plagiarism, AICOA and OAMA received considerable attention in our symposium on Antitrust’s Uncertain Future; ICLE’s Dirk Auer had a Truth on the Market post on AICOA; and Lazar Radic wrote a piece on OAMA that’s currently up for a Concurrences award.

To revisit just a few critical points:

  1. AICOA and OAMA both suppose that “self-preferencing” is generally harmful. Not so. A firm might invest in developing a successful platform and ecosystem because it expects to recoup some of that investment through, among other means, preferred treatment for some of its own products. Exercising a measure of control over downstream or adjacent products might drive the platform’s development in the first place (see here and here for some potential advantages). To cite just a few examples from the empirical literature, Li and Agarwal (2017) find that Facebook’s integration of Instagram led to a significant increase in user demand, not just for Instagram, but for the entire category of photography apps; Foerderer, et al. (2018) find that Google’s 2015 entry into the market for photography apps on Android created additional user attention and demand for such apps generally; and Cennamo, et al. (2018) find that video games offered by console firms often become blockbusters and expanded the consoles’ installed base. As a result, they increase the potential for independent game developers, even in the face of competition from first-party games.
  2. AICOA and OAMA, in somewhat different ways, favor open systems, interoperability, and/or data portability. All of these have potential advantages but, equally, potential costs or disadvantages. Whether any is procompetitive or anticompetitive depends on particular facts and circumstances. In the abstract, each represents a business model that might well be procompetitive or benign, and that consumers might well favor or disfavor. For example, interoperability has potential benefits and costs, and, as Sam Bowman has observed, those costs sometimes exceed the benefits. For instance, interoperability can be exceedingly costly to implement or maintain, and it can generate vulnerabilities that challenge or undermine data security. Data portability can be handy, but it can also harm the interests of third parties—say, friends willing to be named, or depicted in certain photos on a certain platform, but not just anywhere. And while recent commentary suggests that the absence of “open” systems signals a competition problem, it’s hard to understand why. There are many reasons that consumers might prefer “closed” systems, even when they have to pay a premium for them.
  3. AICOA and OAMA both embody dubious assumptions. For example, underlying AICOA is a supposition that vertical integration is generally (or at least typically) harmful. Critics of established antitrust law can point to a few recent studies that cast doubt on the ubiquity of benefits from vertical integration. And it is, in fact, possible for vertical mergers or other vertical conduct to harm competition. But that possibility, and the findings of these few studies, are routinely overstated. The weight of the empirical evidence shows that vertical integration tends to be competitively benign. For example, widely acclaimed meta-analysis by economists Francine Lafontaine (former director of the Federal Trade Commission’s Bureau of Economics under President Barack Obama) and Margaret Slade led them to conclude:

“[U]nder most circumstances, profit-maximizing vertical integration decisions are efficient, not just from the firms’ but also from the consumers’ points of view. Although there are isolated studies that contradict this claim, the vast majority support it. . . .  We therefore conclude that, faced with a vertical arrangement, the burden of evidence should be placed on competition authorities to demonstrate that that arrangement is harmful before the practice is attacked.”

  1. Network effects and data advantages are not insurmountable, nor even necessarily harmful. Advantages of scope and scale for data sets vary according to the data at issue; the context and analytic sophistication of those with access to the data and application; and are subject to diminishing returns, in any case. Simple measures of market share or other numerical thresholds may signal very little of competitive import. See, e.g., this on the contestable platform paradox; Carl Shapiro on the putative decline of competition and irrelevance of certain metrics; and, more generally, antitrust’s well-grounded and wholesale repudiation of the Structure-Conduct-Performance paradigm.

These points are not new. As we note above, they’ve been made more carefully, and in more detail, before. What’s new is that the failure of AICOA and OAMA to reach floor votes in the last Congress leaves their sponsors, and many of their advocates, unchastened.

Conclusion

At yesterday’s hearing, Sen. Klobuchar noted that nations around the world are adopting regulatory frameworks aimed at “reining in” American digital platforms. True enough, but that’s exactly what AICOA and OAMA promise; they will not foster competition or competitiveness.

Novel industries may pose novel challenges, not least to antitrust. But it does not follow that the EU’s Digital Markets Act (DMA), proposed policies in Australia and the United Kingdom, or AICOA and OAMA represent beneficial, much less optimal, policy reforms. As Francis noted, the central commitments of OAMA and AICOA, like the DMA and other proposals, aim to help certain firms at the expense of other firms and consumers. This is not procompetitive reform; it is rent-seeking by less-successful competitors.

AICOA and OAMA were laid to rest with the 117th Congress. They should be left to rest in peace.

In Antitrust & Competition, Exclusionary Conduct, Federal Trade Commission, Monopolization, Platforms, Truth on the Market, Tying, Vertical Restraints , , , , , , ,
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Your Definitive End-of-Year Global Tech Regulation Wrap-Up: Who’s Doing What, Where, and What to Make of It

Lazar Radic —  21 December 2022

As 2023 draws to a close, we wanted to reflect on a year that saw jurisdictions around the world proposing, debating, and (occasionally) enacting digital regulations. Some of these initiatives amended existing ex-post competition laws. Others were more ambitious, contemplating entirely new regulatory regimes from the ground up.

With everything going on, it can be overwhelming even for hardcore antitrust enthusiasts to keep pace with the latest developments. If you have the high-brow interests of a scholar but the jam-packed schedule of a CEO, you have come to the right place. This post is intended to summarize who is doing what, where, and what to make of it.

Status of Tech Regulation Around the World

European Union

In the European Union—the patient zero of tech regulation—two crucial pieces of legislation passed this year: the Digital Markets Act (DMA) and the Digital Services Act (DSA).

But notably, the EU is just now—i.e., six months before the act is set to apply in full to all digital “gatekeepers”—launching a consultation on the DMA’s procedural rules (a draft is available here). Many of those procedural questions remain exceedingly fuzzy (substantive ones, too), such as, e.g.—the role of the advisory committee, the role of third parties in proceedings, national authorities’ access to data gathered by the Commission, and the role to be played (if any) by the European Competition Network. Further, only now is a DMA enforcement unit being created within the Commission, although it is also unclear whether it will have the staffing capacity to satisfy the tight deadlines.

Whether or not the implementing regulation ultimately resolves all of these questions, they should have been settled much sooner. But as is becoming customary in tech regulation, it seems that the political urge to “do something” has once again prevailed over careful consideration and foresight.

United Kingdom

In the United Kingdom, legislation to empower the Competition and Markets Authority’s (CMA) Digital Markets Unit (DMU) is set to be brought to Parliament this term, meaning that it may be discussed in the next two months. Of all the “pending” antitrust bills around the world, this is probably the most likely to be adopted. Although it dropped an earlier dubious proposal on mergers, there remain several significant concerns with the DMU (see here and here for previous commentary). For example, the DMU’s standard of review is surprisingly truncated, considering the expansive powers that would be bestowed on the agency. The DMU would apply the strategic market significance (SMS) tag to entire firms and not just to those operations where the firm may have market power. Moreover, the DMU proposal shows little concern for due process.

One looming question is whether the UK will learn from the EU’s example, and resolve substantive and procedural questions well ahead of imposing any obligations on SMS companies. In the end, whatever the UK does or doesn’t do will have reverberations around the globe, as many countries appear to be adopting a DMA-style designation process for gatekeepers but imposing “code of conduct” obligations inspired by the DMU.

United States

Across the pond, the major antitrust tech bills introduced in Congress have come to a standstill. Despite some 11th hour efforts by their sponsors, neither the American Innovation and Choice Online Act, nor the Open App Markets Act, nor the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act made the cut to be included in the $1.7 trillion, 4,155-page omnibus bill that will be the last vote taken by the 117th Congress. With divided power in the 118th Congress, it’s possible that the push to regulate tech might fizzle out.

What went wrong for antitrust reformers? Republicans and Democrats have always sought different things from the bills. Democrats want to “tame” big tech, hold it accountable for the proliferation of “harmful” content online, and redistribute rents toward competitors and other businesses across the supply chain (e.g., app developers, media organizations, etc.). Republicans, on the other hand, seek to limit platforms’ ability to “censor conservative views” and to punish them for supposedly having done so in the past. The difficulty of aligning these two visions has obstructed decisive movement on the bills. But, more broadly, it also goes to show that the logic for tech regulation is far from homogenous, and that wildly different aims can be pursued under the umbrella of “choice,” “contestability,” and “fairness.”

South Africa

As my colleague Dirk Auer covered yesterday, South Africa has launched a sectoral inquiry into online-intermediation platforms, which has produced a provisional report (see here for a brief overview). The provisional report identifies Apple, Google, Airbnb, Uber Eats, and South Africa’s own Takealot, among others, as “leading online platforms” and offers suggestions to make the markets in which these companies compete more “contestable.” This includes a potential ex ante regulatory regime.

But as Dirk noted, there are certain considerations the developing countries must bear in mind when contemplating ex ante regimes that developed countries do not (or, at least, not to the same extent). Most importantly, these countries are typically highly dependent on foreign investment, which might sidestep those jurisdictions that impose draconian DMA-style laws.

This could be the case with Amazon, which is planning to launch its marketplace in South Africa in February 2023 (the same month the sectoral inquiry is due). The degree and duration of Amazon’s presence might hinge on the country’s regulatory regime for online platforms. If unfavorable or exceedingly ambiguous, the new rules might prompt Amazon and other companies to relocate elsewhere. It is notable that local platform Takealot has, to date, demonstrated market dominance in South Africa, which most observers doubt that Amazon will be able to displace.

India

No one can be quite sure what is going on in India. There has been some agitation for a DMA-style ex ante regulatory regime within the Parliament of India, which is currently debating an amendment to the Competition Act that would, among other things, lower merger thresholds.

More drastically, however, a standing committee on e-commerce (where e-commerce is taken to mean all online commerce, not just retail) issued a report that recommended identifying “gatekeepers” for more stringent supervision under an ex ante regime that would, e.g., bar companies from selling goods on the platforms they own. At its core, the approach appears to assume that the DMA constitutes “best practices” in online competition law, despite the fact that the DMA’s ultimate effects and costs remain a mystery. As such, “best practices” in this area of law may not be very good at all.

Australia

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) has been conducting a five-year inquiry into digital-platform services, which is due in March 2025. In its recently published fifth interim report, the ACCC recommended codes of conduct (similar to the DMU) for “designated” digital platforms. Questions surrounding the proposed regime include whether the ACCC will have to demonstrate effects; the availability of objective justifications (the latest report mentions security and privacy); and what thresholds would be used to “designate” a company (so far, turnover seems likely).

On the whole, Australia’s strategy has been to follow closely in the footsteps of the EU and the United States. Given this influence from international developments, the current freeze on U.S. tech regulation might have taken some of the wind out of the sails of similar regulatory efforts down under.

China

China appears to be playing a waiting game. On the one hand, it has ramped up antitrust enforcement under the Anti-Monopoly Law (AML). On the other, in August 2022, it introduced the first major amendment since the enactment of the AML, which included a new prohibition on the use of “technology, algorithms and platform rules” to engage in monopolistic behavior. This is clearly aimed at strengthening enforcement against digital platforms. Numerous other digital-specific regulations are also under consideration (with uncertain timelines). These include a platform-classification regime that would subject online platforms to different obligations in the areas of data protection, fair competition, and labor treatment, and a data-security regulation that would prohibit online-platform operators from taking advantage of data for unfair discriminatory practices against the platform’s users or vendors.

South Korea

Seoul was one of the first jurisdictions to pass legislation targeting app stores (see here and here). Other legislative proposals include rules on price-transparency obligations and the use of platform-generated data, as well as a proposed obligation for online news services to remunerate news publishers. With the government’s new emphasis on self-regulation as an alternative to prescriptive regulation, however, it remains unclear whether or when these laws will be adopted.

Germany

Germany recently implemented a reform to its Competition Act that allows the Bundeskartellamt to prohibit certain forms of conduct (such as self-preferencing) without the need to prove anticompetitive harm and that extends the essential-facility doctrine to cover data. The Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action (BMWK) is now considering further amendments that would, e.g., allow the Bundeskartellamt to impose structural remedies following a sectoral inquiry, independent of an abuse; and introduce a presumption that anticompetitive conduct has resulted in profits for the infringing company (this is relevant for the purpose of calculating fines and, especially, for proving damages in private enforcement).

Canada

Earlier this year, Canada reformed its abuse-of-dominance provisions to bolster fines and introduce a private right of access to tribunals. It also recently opened a consultation on the future of competition policy, which invites input about the objectives of antitrust, the enforcement powers of the Competition Bureau, and the effectiveness of private remedies, and raises the question of whether digital markets require special rules (see this report). Although an ex-ante regime doesn’t currently appear to be in the cards, Canada’s strategy has been to wait and see how existing regulatory proposals play out in other countries.

Turkey

Turkey is considering a DMA-inspired amendment to the Competition Act that would, however, go beyond even the EU’s ex-ante regulatory regime in that it would not allow for any objective justifications or defenses.

Japan

In 2020, Japan introduced the Act on Improving Transparency and Fairness of Digital Platforms, which stipulates that designated platforms should take voluntary and proactive steps to ensure transparency and “fairness” vis-a-vis businesses. This “co-regulation” approach differs from other regulations in that it stipulates the general framework and leaves details to businesses’ voluntary efforts. Japan is now, however, also contemplating DMA-like ex-ante regulations for mobile ecosystems, voice assistants, and wearable devices.

Six Hasty Conclusions from the Even Hastier Global Wave of Tech Regulation

  • Most of these regimes are still in the making. Some have just been proposed and have a long way to go until they become law. The U.S. example shows how lack of consensus can derail even the most apparently imminent tech bill.
  • Even if every single country covered in this post were to adopt tech legislation, we have seen that the goals pursued and the obligations imposed can be wildly different and possibly contradictory. Even within a given jurisdiction, lawmakers may not agree what the purpose of the law should be (see, e.g., the United States). And, after all, it should probably be alarming if the Chinese Communist Party and the EU had the same definition of “fairness.”
  • Should self-preferencing bans, interoperability mandates, and similar rules that target online platforms be included under the banner of antitrust? In some countries, like Turkey, rules copied and pasted from the DMA have been proposed as amendments to the national competition act. But the EU itself insists that competition law and the DMA are separate things. Which is it? At this stage, shouldn’t the first principles of digital regulation be clearer?
  • In the EU, in particular, multiple overlapping ex-ante regimes can lead to double and even triple jeopardy, especially given their proximity to antitrust law. In other words, there is a risk that the same conduct will be punished at both the national and EU level, and under the DMA and EU competition rules.
  • In light of the above, global ex-ante regulatory compliance is going to impose mind-boggling costs on targeted companies, especially considering the opacity of some provisions and the substantial differences among countries (think, e.g., of Turkey, where there is no space for objective justifications).
  • There are always complex tradeoffs to be made and sensitive considerations to keep in mind when deciding whether and how to regulate the most successful tech companies. The potential for costly errors is multiplied, however, in the case of developing countries, where there is a realistic risk of repelling “dominant” companies before they even enter the market (see South Africa).

Some of the above issues could be addressed with some foresight. That, however, seems to be sorely lacking in the race to push tech regulation through the door at any cost. As distinguished scholars like Fred Jenny have warned, caving to the political pressure of economic populism can come at the expense of competition and innovation. Let’s hope that is not the case here, there, or anywhere.

In Antitrust & Competition, China, European Union, Federal Trade Commission, International, Justice Department, United Kingdom , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
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7 Big Questions About the Open App Markets Act

Lazar Radic —  1 November 2022

With just a week to go until the U.S. midterm elections, which potentially herald a change in control of one or both houses of Congress, speculation is mounting that congressional Democrats may seek to use the lame-duck session following the election to move one or more pieces of legislation targeting the so-called “Big Tech” companies.

Gaining particular notice—on grounds that it is the least controversial of the measures—is S. 2710, the Open App Markets Act (OAMA). Introduced by Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), the Senate bill has garnered 14 cosponsors: exactly seven Republicans and seven Democrats. It would, among other things, force certain mobile app stores and operating systems to allow “sideloading” and open their platforms to rival in-app payment systems.

Unfortunately, even this relatively restrained legislation—at least, when compared to Sen. Amy Klobuchar’s (D-Minn.) American Innovation and Choice Online Act or the European Union’s Digital Markets Act (DMA)—is highly problematic in its own right. Here, I will offer seven major questions the legislation leaves unresolved.

1.     Are Quantitative Thresholds a Good Indicator of ‘Gatekeeper Power’?

It is no secret that OAMA has been tailor-made to regulate two specific app stores: Android’s Google Play Store and Apple’s Apple App Store (see here, here, and, yes, even Wikipedia knows it).The text makes this clear by limiting the bill’s scope to app stores with more than 50 million users, a threshold that only Google Play and the Apple App Store currently satisfy.

However, purely quantitative thresholds are a poor indicator of a company’s potential “gatekeeper power.” An app store might have much fewer than 50 million users but cater to a relevant niche market. By the bill’s own logic, why shouldn’t that app store likewise be compelled to be open to competing app distributors? Conversely, it may be easy for users of very large app stores to multi-home or switch seamlessly to competing stores. In either case, raw user data paints a distorted picture of the market’s realities.

As it stands, the bill’s thresholds appear arbitrary and pre-committed to “disciplining” just two companies: Google and Apple. In principle, good laws should be abstract and general and not intentionally crafted to apply only to a few select actors. In OAMA’s case, the law’s specific thresholds are also factually misguided, as purely quantitative criteria are not a good proxy for the sort of market power the bill purportedly seeks to curtail.

2.     Why Does the Bill not Apply to all App Stores?

Rather than applying to app stores across the board, OAMA targets only those associated with mobile devices and “general purpose computing devices.” It’s not clear why.

For example, why doesn’t it cover app stores on gaming platforms, such as Microsoft’s Xbox or Sony’s PlayStation?

Source: Visual Capitalist

Currently, a PlayStation user can only buy digital games through the PlayStation Store, where Sony reportedly takes a 30% cut of all sales—although its pricing schedule is less transparent than that of mobile rivals such as Apple or Google.

Clearly, this bothers some developers. Much like Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney’s ongoing crusade against the Apple App Store, indie-game publisher Iain Garner of Neon Doctrine recently took to Twitter to complain about Sony’s restrictive practices. According to Garner, “Platform X” (clearly PlayStation) charges developers up to $25,000 and 30% of subsequent earnings to give games a modicum of visibility on the platform, in addition to requiring them to jump through such hoops as making a PlayStation-specific trailer and writing a blog post. Garner further alleges that Sony severely circumscribes developers’ ability to offer discounts, “meaning that Platform X owners will always get the worst deal!” (see also here).

Microsoft’s Xbox Game Store similarly takes a 30% cut of sales. Presumably, Microsoft and Sony both have the same type of gatekeeper power in the gaming-console market that Apple and Google are said to have on their respective platforms, leading to precisely those issues that OAMA ostensibly purports to combat. Namely, that consumers are not allowed to choose alternative app stores through which to buy games on their respective consoles, and developers must acquiesce to Sony’s and Microsoft’s terms if they want their games to reach those players.

More broadly, dozens of online platforms also charge commissions on the sales made by their creators. To cite but a few: OnlyFans takes a 20% cut of sales; Facebook gets 30% of the revenue that creators earn from their followers; YouTube takes 45% of ad revenue generated by users; and Twitch reportedly rakes in 50% of subscription fees.

This is not to say that all these services are monopolies that should be regulated. To the contrary, it seems like fees in the 20-30% range are common even in highly competitive environments. Rather, it is merely to observe that there are dozens of online platforms that demand a percentage of the revenue that creators generate and that prevent those creators from bypassing the platform. As well they should, after all, because creating and improving a platform is not free.

It is nonetheless difficult to see why legislation regulating online marketplaces should focus solely on two mobile app stores. Ultimately, the inability of OAMA’s sponsors to properly account for this carveout diminishes the law’s credibility.

3.     Should Picking Among Legitimate Business Models Be up to Lawmakers or Consumers?

“Open” and “closed” platforms posit two different business models, each with its own advantages and disadvantages. Some consumers may prefer more open platforms because they grant them more flexibility to customize their mobile devices and operating systems. But there are also compelling reasons to prefer closed systems. As Sam Bowman observed, narrowing choice through a more curated system frees users from having to research every possible option every time they buy or use some product. Instead, they can defer to the platform’s expertise in determining whether an app or app store is trustworthy or whether it contains, say, objectionable content.

Currently, users can choose to opt for Apple’s semi-closed “walled garden” iOS or Google’s relatively more open Android OS (which OAMA wants to pry open even further). Ironically, under the pretext of giving users more “choice,” OAMA would take away the possibility of choice where it matters the most—i.e., at the platform level. As Mikolaj Barczentewicz has written:

A sideloading mandate aims to give users more choice. It can only achieve this, however, by taking away the option of choosing a device with a “walled garden” approach to privacy and security (such as is taken by Apple with iOS).

This obviates the nuances between the two and pushes Android and iOS to converge around a single model. But if consumers unequivocally preferred open platforms, Apple would have no customers, because everyone would already be on Android.

Contrary to regulators’ simplistic assumptions, “open” and “closed” are not synonyms for “good” and “bad.” Instead, as Boston University’s Andrei Hagiu has shown, there are fundamental welfare tradeoffs at play between these two perfectly valid business models that belie simplistic characterizations of one being inherently superior to the other.

It is debatable whether courts, regulators, or legislators are well-situated to resolve these complex tradeoffs by substituting businesses’ product-design decisions and consumers’ revealed preferences with their own. After all, if regulators had such perfect information, we wouldn’t need markets or competition in the first place.

4.     Does OAMA Account for the Security Risks of Sideloading?

Platforms retaining some control over the apps or app stores allowed on their operating systems bolsters security, as it allows companies to weed out bad players.

Both Apple and Google do this, albeit to varying degrees. For instance, Android already allows sideloading and third-party in-app payment systems to some extent, while Apple runs a tighter ship. However, studies have shown that it is precisely the iOS “walled garden” model which gives it an edge over Android in terms of privacy and security. Even vocal Apple critic Tim Sweeney recently acknowledged that increased safety and privacy were competitive advantages for Apple.

The problem is that far-reaching sideloading mandates—such as the ones contemplated under OAMA—are fundamentally at odds with current privacy and security capabilities (see here and here).

OAMA’s defenders might argue that the law does allow covered platforms to raise safety and security defenses, thus making the tradeoffs between openness and security unnecessary. But the bill places such stringent conditions on those defenses that platform operators will almost certainly be deterred from risking running afoul of the law’s terms. To invoke the safety and security defenses, covered companies must demonstrate that provisions are applied on a “demonstrably consistent basis”; are “narrowly tailored and could not be achieved through less discriminatory means”; and are not used as a “pretext to exclude or impose unnecessary or discriminatory terms.”

Implementing these stringent requirements will drag enforcers into a micromanagement quagmire. There are thousands of potential spyware, malware, rootkit, backdoor, and phishing (to name just a few) software-security issues—all of which pose distinct threats to an operating system. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the federal courts will almost certainly struggle to control the “consistency” requirement across such varied types.

Likewise, OAMA’s reference to “least discriminatory means” suggests there is only one valid answer to any given security-access tradeoff. Further, depending on one’s preferred balance between security and “openness,” a claimed security risk may or may not be “pretextual,” and thus may or may not be legal.

Finally, the bill text appears to preclude the possibility of denying access to a third-party app or app store for reasons other than safety and privacy. This would undermine Apple’s and Google’s two-tiered quality-control systems, which also control for “objectionable” content such as (child) pornography and social engineering. 

5.     How Will OAMA Safeguard the Rights of Covered Platforms?

OAMA is also deeply flawed from a procedural standpoint. Most importantly, there is no meaningful way to contest the law’s designation as “covered company,” or the harms associated with it.

Once a company is “covered,” it is presumed to hold gatekeeper power, with all the associated risks for competition, innovation, and consumer choice. Remarkably, this presumption does not admit any qualitative or quantitative evidence to the contrary. The only thing a covered company can do to rebut the designation is to demonstrate that it, in fact, has fewer than 50 million users.

By preventing companies from showing that they do not hold the kind of gatekeeper power that harms competition, decreases innovation, raises prices, and reduces choice (the bill’s stated objectives), OAMA severely tilts the playing field in the FTC’s favor. Even the EU’s enforcer-friendly DMA incorporated a last-minute amendment allowing firms to dispute their status as “gatekeepers.” While this defense is not perfect (companies cannot rely on the same qualitative evidence that the European Commission can use against them), at least gatekeeper status can be contested under the DMA.

6.     Should Legislation Protect Competitors at the Expense of Consumers?

Like most of the new wave of regulatory initiatives against Big Tech (but unlike antitrust law), OAMA is explicitly designed to help competitors, with consumers footing the bill.

For example, OAMA prohibits covered companies from using or combining nonpublic data obtained from third-party apps or app stores operating on their platforms in competition with those third parties. While this may have the short-term effect of redistributing rents away from these platforms and toward competitors, it risks harming consumers and third-party developers in the long run.

Platforms’ ability to integrate such data is part of what allows them to bring better and improved products and services to consumers in the first place. OAMA tacitly admits this by recognizing that the use of nonpublic data grants covered companies a competitive advantage. In other words, it allows them to deliver a product that is better than competitors’.

Prohibiting self-preferencing raises similar concerns. Why wouldn’t a company that has invested billions in developing a successful platform and ecosystem not give preference to its own products to recoup some of that investment? After all, the possibility of exercising some control over downstream and adjacent products is what might have driven the platform’s development in the first place. In other words, self-preferencing may be a symptom of competition, and not the absence thereof. Third-party companies also would have weaker incentives to develop their own platforms if they can free-ride on the investments of others. And platforms that favor their own downstream products might simply be better positioned to guarantee their quality and reliability (see here and here).

In all of these cases, OAMA’s myopic focus on improving the lot of competitors for easy political points will upend the mobile ecosystems from which both users and developers derive significant benefit.

7.     Shouldn’t the EU Bear the Risks of Bad Tech Regulation?

Finally, U.S. lawmakers should ask themselves whether the European Union, which has no tech leaders of its own, is really a model to emulate. Today, after all, marks the day the long-awaited Digital Markets Act— the EU’s response to perceived contestability and fairness problems in the digital economy—officially takes effect. In anticipation of the law entering into force, I summarized some of the outstanding issues that will define implementation moving forward in this recent tweet thread.

We have been critical of the DMA here at Truth on the Market on several factual, legal, economic, and procedural grounds. The law’s problems range from it essentially being a tool to redistribute rents away from platforms and to third-parties, despite it being unclear why the latter group is inherently more deserving (Pablo Ibañez Colomo has raised a similar point); to its opacity and lack of clarity, a process that appears tilted in the Commission’s favor; to the awkward way it interacts with EU competition law, ignoring the welfare tradeoffs between the models it seeks to impose and perfectly valid alternatives (see here and here); to its flawed assumptions (see, e.g., here on contestability under the DMA); to the dubious legal and economic value of the theory of harm known as  “self-preferencing”; to the very real possibility of unintended consequences (e.g., in relation to security and interoperability mandates).

In other words, that the United States lags the EU in seeking to regulate this area might not be a bad thing, after all. Despite the EU’s insistence on being a trailblazing agenda-setter at all costs, the wiser thing in tech regulation might be to remain at a safe distance. This is particularly true when one considers the potentially large costs of legislative missteps and the difficulty of recalibrating once a course has been set.

U.S. lawmakers should take advantage of this dynamic and learn from some of the Old Continent’s mistakes. If they play their cards right and take the time to read the writing on the wall, they might just succeed in averting antitrust’s uncertain future.

In Antitrust & Competition, Apple, Data Privacy & Security, European Union, Federal Trade Commission, Google, Monopolization, Platforms, Truth on the Market, Tying, Vertical Restraints , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
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