“Follow the Money” - Mapping issues with digital platforms into actionable theories of harm

1. DO WE STILL CARE ABOUT ANTITRUST? ISN’T IT ALL ABOUT “BREAK THEM UP” OR “SMART EX-ANTE REGULATION”? The policy debate around “digital platforms” has been increasingly animated (particularly in the US) by calls for direct intervention by law makers to bring about major change (including structural breakups) on the basis that the antitrust tool is just too narrow and ineffectual to deal with their “vast power” in its multiple negative manifestations. The sentiment that antitrust is limited in its reach is voiced also by veterans like Carl Shapiro, cautioning that antitrust enforcement cannot deal with a lot of the big societal issues we are worried about (“Antitrust is not designed or equipped to deal with many of the major social and political problems associated with the tech titans,