Internal Facebook documents recently released by whistleblower Frances Haugen, and her subsequent Senate testimony, have reignited the discussion about big tech companies and antitrust. Over the past few years, politicians as disparate as Senator Elizabeth Warren and former President Donald Trump have complained about the supposed monopoly power of companies like Facebook, Google, Amazon, and Apple. Some have interpreted information in the leaked Facebook documents as a loss for the social media company in its battle against antitrust regulators; a Politico article earlier this week declared that the “Facebook documents offer a treasure trove for Washington’s antitrust war.” While the media link Big Tech with bad behavior and antitrust as a solution, the documents actually do not offer much evidence of market power and consumer harm, which are central to antitrust policy.

In the current issue of Regulation, Jonathan Klick argues against the use of antitrust laws against the tech companies because their social networking services are free to consumers. As our colleague Ryan Bourne has argued, Facebook’s market is not social networking but advertising. And in selling advertising space and competing for consumer attention, Facebook faces stiff competition from other tech and non-tech companies, such as radio and television.

If market power in advertising isn’t the problem, what is? Critics argue that tech companies’ size and prominence give them advantages in other markets that they enter. Whatever they touch turns to gold. But relatively unknown Zoom and GoToWebinar have captured about 60 percent of the teleconferencing market during the pandemic while services from tech giants, such as Microsoft Teams, Amazon Chime, and Facebook Messenger, have failed miserably among consumers.

How about Facebook using its “monopoly” to gain an advantage in video and messaging services? The leaked documents directly refute these concerns. Politico mentions that, while Facebook-owned Instagram has excelled among teens and young adults,

The only areas where other apps surpass Instagram and Facebook were messaging and entertainment, the survey found. Teens and young adults were more likely to use regular texts (30 percent) or Snapchat (24 percent) for messages than either Instagram or Facebook Messenger (14 percent each), another survey found. All ages said they were more likely to watch videos on YouTube or TikTok than on Facebook and Instagram.

The debate about big tech and antitrust often overlooks the role that private firms play in lobbying for antitrust enforcement to increase demand for their products relative to those of rivals. In the current issue of Regulation, Thomas Lambert provides examples of such behavior.

Traditional newspapers have declined because they no longer have local advertising monopolies. Free news services provided by Google and Facebook use news “snippets” from traditional sources along with links to those sources. Even though the traditional newspapers could easily deny access, they do not because the news snippets drive eyeballs to the original newspaper websites. Instead, they demand compensation. Lambert argues that Spain, France, and Australia require Google and Facebook to pay licensing fees to support traditional news organizations because the latter cover politics and play a role in shaping voter electoral choices through news coverage. Members of the government offer subsidies in return for favorable coverage.

Epic Games, which makes the popular video game Fortnite, has claimed that both Apple and Google have violated antitrust laws by requiring all app purchases be made through their own app stores. Lambert claims that the impetus for Epic’s complaint is that it wants Apple and Google to monetize their platforms in a way that is more favorable to Epic. In a recent Twitter exchange with Epic CEO and founder Tim Sweeny, he explains:

App developers like Epic, though, would like to see Apple monetize its platform control in a different way, as the system Apple has chosen (a 30% commission on sales) extracts more from popular apps and subsidizes upstarts.

If Epic were to prevail on appeal and force Apple to (1) allow iOS app distribution outside the App store, and (2) permit in-app purchases using payment systems that could evade Apple’s revenue share, Apple’s market power would not be reduced one iota.

Apple could still charge “supracompetitive” prices for iOS access, because it controls iOS. It would just have to do so in a way that would advantage Epic at the expense of developers of less popular apps (say, by charging all developers for API (Application Programming Interface) access).

Lambert’s third example describes the role of IBM and Oracle lobbying for reform of Section 230 of the Telecommunications Act, which currently exempts internet platforms from legal action regarding user-generated content. Oracle and IBM compete with Google and Amazon in the provision of cloud computing services, but do not operate platforms. Thus, they lobby for the legal changes that increase the costs of Google and Amazon, which must worry more about user-generated content. IBM also sells an artificial intelligence software product, a version of Watson that played Jeopardy, that would provide compliance with “reasonable care” to monitor and eliminate “illegal or offensive” user-generated content.

Google and Facebook are not always the victims. They both have been advantaged by the European Union’s 2018 General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). The regulation imposed new requirements on the use of third-party user information in selling digital advertising. Both Google and Facebook increased their market share of European digital ad spending following GDPR’s implementation because firms prefer to concentrate their ad budgets with companies they trust not to violate the rules. And GDPR makes it harder for third parties to collect the personal information that is so valuable for targeting ads, thus digital firms that have direct relationships with users can gain consent to use their data. Google and Facebook are much less reliant on third-party data.

Antitrust policy is often portrayed as the noble efforts of public officials against the evil machinations of powerful companies. In reality antitrust is often an attempt by some companies to acquire market privileges against other companies through the political process.