Maybe, just as one idea, new anti-network effect legislation is the right way to attack monopolies of the present and the future.
He agrees with her for raising this, and does think that some regulation should be in place, but sufficiently understanding the underlying nature of the problem is important to do less harm than good.
Government, like medicine, means making decisions based on insufficient information. More and better information should be preferred, but it's important to recall that doing nothing is also a decision. Its being a default decision does not make it exempt it from the possibility of doing more harm than good.
We want to make the best decision possible, but that needs to take into account that any multi-dimensional problem is easily diverted into taking no action even when there is widespread belief in favor of some action. "Belief" is one of the ways we cope with the absence of information: we just ask people and do what the majority wants. So it's very easy to take a complex problem and present multiple competing solutions, any of which would be preferred by a majority but no one of which will be the single best choice for more than half.
Sorry that that went into an abstraction, and you probably know all that. It just raises a red flag for me when somebody says "It's complicated" but means "Well, not doing anything just happens to suit me, so I can continue to declare that it's complicated indefinitely, because it is."
First phrase: "Senator Elizabeth Warren deserves credit"
Rest of article: Giving Warren no credit, merely quoting her proposal and refuting parts of it.
It's clear this is a proposal, it's like Green New Deal or Medicare for All. There's almost zero chance anything like these policies would not get heavily changed in a legislative process. Politicians just release these to market themselves and guide the policy discussions pre-election.
If the choices are ”we must do something, even if it’s the wrong thing” (a fallacy) and doing nothing because we aren’t sure - I prefer the latter. Anyone with government experience should understand this.
In this case, the truth is Warren isn’t sure. No one is. This entire thing isn’t Standard Oil, it’s just a hollow campaign bulletin point to get her name used.
I mean the core of the whole idea is that no one should both control the platform and simultaneously participate in it. Is the author against that? The pushback seems to be that it would lead to lawsuits which is almost a cliche from anyone trying to dismiss an idea.