The Realignment: The Anti-Monopoly Moment and the Next Twitter Alternative?
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Hey everyone, welcome back to The Realignment’s Substack newsletter.
I particularly enjoyed recording this week’s upcoming episodes. Each features a leader approaching a specific issue and topic that the show has spent a significant amount of time covering. In this case, anti-monopoly policy and the future of digital news/social media platforms.
First up, tomorrow’s episode is an interview with Rohit Chopra, Director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Earlier in the month, Director Chopra delivered remarks at the American Economic Liberties Project’s Anti-Monopoly Summit.
Saagar and I are famously bearish on the idea that the current “realignment” producing left-right synthesis opportunities. One of the few areas where that is demonstrably untrue is the anti-monopoly space. As we discuss, the 2019 controversy over then FTC Commissioner Chopra’s desire to aggressively enforce “Made in America” provisions over the objection of more traditional Republican appointees, is the perfect illustration of the dynamic. That isn’t to say there won’t be enormous dead eds, such as social media regulation, where the left and right critiques of tech giants are completely contradictory (social media companies are irresponsibly unregulated when it comes to speech vs. social media companies are promoters of biased censorship).
Thankfully, the topics we discuss on the episodes fall outside of the culture wars.
Agree or disagree, Director Chopra, in addition to Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan, offer new approaches to the enforcement/monopoly spaces. Hopefully other appointees/elected officials could bring similar amounts of energy and focus to their own positions.
Thursday’s episode is with Noam Bardin. Previously, Noam was the CEO of Waze, which was acquired by Google. Now, he’s the founder and CEO of Post, a new platform for sharing, engaging, and discussing the news. When Post originally launched last fall in the wake of Elon Musk’s initial struggles at Twitter, many people assumed that Post was just a Twitter alternative for the Blue Tribe. As becomes clear in our conversation, post is better understood as a news platform built on micropayments.
If you’ve ever found content on Twitter (or any other social media platform) that you’d like to read, but can’t justify paying a $100/year subscription for, Noam’s micropayments idea could be up your alley. The difficulty for Post is that there have been countless efforts over the past decade to implement a micropayments system, yet they have all failed.
You can learn more about Post here.
Interviews with politicians and CEOs can be hit or miss, but I’m helped by the fact that Director Chopra and Noam are quick on their feet, and have substantive thoughts when it comes to approaching the relevant challenges in their spaces.
Last Week’s Paid Episode
Every other Friday, Saagar and I publish a Supercast-exclusive discussion episode. Subscribers can submit questions and topics for us to at The Realignment’s Ask Me Anything page.
You can preview the episode here. The full audio is available at our Supercast page for subscribers.
In today's Supercast exclusive discussion and Ask Me Anything, Saagar and Marshall discuss whether a Biden or Trump presidency in 2025 would be worse for the country, what cultural artifacts the Trump era (2015-2021) produced, wielding Twitter influence, and defense production stumbles, despite a record high defense budget.
Last Week’s Free Episodes
371 | Evan Thomas: The Atomic Bomb's Legacy in a Disordered World
370 | Timothy B. Lee: Why Artificial Intelligence Won't Cause Mass Unemployment
Upcoming Episodes
May 23 | Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Director Rohit Chopra on the anti-monopoly movement’s agenda.
May 25 | Noam Bardin on his new Twitter alternative, Post.
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If you purchase a book using our link, the show gets a 10% commission, a local, independent bookseller gets support, and you get an awesome book!
What We’re Reading: 2023 Edition
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