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Todd Davies

@todddavi.es

1.5K followers 1.1K following 190 posts

Competition Law PhD Candidate @ University College London Working on a theory of the competitive process, polycrisis, private power, political economy, ecology and democracy. Previously a software engineer. https://todddavi.es 🍉🌱

todddavi.es

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Todd Davies @todddavi.es · Mar 21

How can decisions about whether competition authorities should intervene against tech platforms have implications for democracy? 🗳️

@spencercohen.bsky.social and I tackle that question in a new paper published in Journal of Competition Law & Economics! 🧵

doi.org/10.1093/jocl... (OA)

Error Costs, Platform Regulation, and Democracy

Abstract. Competition law has long favoured an error-cost framework that advocates for non-intervention under the assumption that market power self-correct

doi.org

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JW Mason @jwmason.bsky.social · 8h

As it happens, this is almost exactly the same as Nintendo’s annual revenue. Which seems like the right comparison- a successful producer of electronic toys. on.ft.com/4nMkP0B

OpenAI books about $13bn in annual recurring revenue, 70 per cent of which comes from consumers using ChatGPT, which costs $20 for a standard subscription, according to people familiar with the company’s finances.

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Todd Davies @todddavi.es · 1d

Excellent essay!

It rebuts Marxist pessimism about the anti-monopoly movement, highlights the importance of contesting Capital's control of economic production, and ties it all into the recent failures of the movement (particularly wrt. the recent anti-monopolisation case against Google).

Marshall Steinbaum @econmarshall.bsky.social · 1d

I have a new piece in @lpeblog.bsky.social

“Anti-monopolism as an Ideology of the Left”

responding to @gabrielwinant.bsky.social’s “provocation.”

lpeproject.org/blog/anti-mo...

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Kevin M. Kruse @kevinmkruse.bsky.social · 2d

Matt Stoller being very Matt Stoller, calling someone else a "classic left poseur snob"

Matt Stoller being eviscerated by @dieworkwear.bsky.social

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Simonetta Vezzoso @wavesblog.bsky.social · 1d

Put differently...

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brasidas @brasidas.bsky.social · 3d

Anyone who claims that Silicon Valley would be better with more humanities education has to grapple with the fact that Peter Thiel was a philosophy major.

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Todd Davies @todddavi.es · 6d

Maybe Richard Hamming? He writes about computers as symbol manipulators in The Art of Doing Science and Engineering, especially in the history section. They're dotted around, but do a search for "symbol ma"... and you'll find them.

worrydream.com/refs/Hamming...

worrydream.com

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George Monbiot @georgemonbiot.bsky.social · 6d

Astonishing advance by the Greens, astonishing implosion of Labour. When will Starmer's government get the message that it is destroying its base with deeply unpopular, rightwing policies?

By chasing Reform, it legitimises the far right while delegitimising itself.

Zack Polanski @zackpolanski.bsky.social · 6d

Latest poll puts Greens just two points behind Labour. When I said we weren't here to be disappointed in Labour but to replace them, I meant it.

Join us and let's make hope normal again.

join.greenparty.org.uk

Poll from find out now showing greens on 15 and labour and Tories on 17. Reform on 32.

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Todd Davies @todddavi.es · 6d

I'm in ProMarket today arguing that the EU Commission has the legal and methodological tools to tackle excessive prices, but for primarily institutional reasons, hasn't been doing.

www.promarket.org/2025/10/08/t...

@promarket.bsky.social

The European Commission Can and Must Act on Excessive Pricing - ProMarket

The European Commission has struggled to tackle excessive prices in Europe, despite evidence of how they arise in relation to market power. Aline Blankertz, Todd Davies, Justine Haekens, and Nicholas ...

www.promarket.org

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Abe Newman @abenewman.bsky.social · 10d

2/"We have been incredibly naive in entrusting our democratic space to social networks that are controlled either by large American entrepreneurs or large Chinese companies, whose interests are not at all the survival or proper functioning of our democracies."
defenddemocracy.eu/macron-democ...

"Europeans, let's wake up!" — Defend Democracy

“We have been incredibly naive in entrusting our democratic space to social networks.” President Macron on the occasion of German Unity Day, 3 October 2025.

defenddemocracy.eu

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Lawprofblawg @lawprofblawg.bsky.social · 10d

My thread* on authoritarianism in the legal academy, and its origins.

*These thoughts are my own and do not reflect the views of my current employer, who has already begun to accept precompliance.

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Rachel Coldicutt @rachelcoldicutt.bsky.social · 22d

I wish Peters Kyle and Mandelson had someone as smart and experienced as Tim Wu on their side when they were negotiating the "Tech Prosperity Deal" on.ft.com/47WmGLi

When it comes to tech, Britain must avoid becoming Nebraska

Silicon Valley’s investment may be welcome but the UK should not allow itself to be a data-centre farm

on.ft.com

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Tom Clark @tom-clark.bsky.social · 22d

Useful reminder from Peter Kellner on the problems we refuse to acknowledge are getting better, and the politics of hopelessness that this breeds

open.substack.com/pub/kellnerp...

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Ed Zitron @edzitron.com · 23d

This was fantastic. We say “touch grass” like a curse on someone, when really the digital realm has become a place to separate us from the sensual (and I’d argue the emotional) connection we have with the world around us and those closest to us

What emerges is something like an upside down Gnosticism, a world designed to remove you from the sensual, and thereby rob you of community, autonomy, or self-knowledge. As Audre Lorde writes in her essential essay Uses of the Erotic:
"When we live outside ourselves, and by that I mean on external directives only rather than from our internal knowledge and needs, when we live away from those erotic guides from within ourselves, then our lives are limited by external and alien forms, and we conform to the needs of a structure that is not based on human
need, let alone an individual's...in touch with the erotic, I become less willing to accept powerlessness, or those other supplied states of being which are not native to me, such as resignation, despair, self-effacement, depression, self-denial."
What people want to replace you with is what they think you already are. If companies, bosses, and boyfriends want to replace you with a robot or an AI model, that's because they already see you and what you do as simply the workings of a machine with far too many bugs. When we buy into this framing, we lose half the battle. The way out is through the senses.

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Stella Creasy MP @stellacreasy.bsky.social · 23d

Reform’s call to deport ALL people who legally make a life here - paying taxes, forming families, volunteering and even being elected - needs calling out.

Contrary to Farage, ILR doesn’t = criminal. They ARE net contributors to our economy.

An expensive, hateful & stupid plan.

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Prof Katherine Schofield 🇬🇧🇦🇺🇪🇺 @katherineschof8.bsky.social · 24d

This is not OK

www.thelondoneconomic.com/politics/how...

Reform, with 0.7% of all MPs, featured in 25% of BBC's recent 10pm news bulletins

Astonishingly, a party with 18 times as many MPs as Reform has received one-third less coverage on BBC News at 10.

www.thelondoneconomic.com

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David Graeber Institute @davidgraeberinst.bsky.social · 25d

Today took place the #Carnival4David in London

Full with radical optimism.

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Robin Berjon @robin.berjon.com · 27d

You'd think that the Brits would be better at spotting a colonial power when they see it.

Olga Nesterova @onestpress.onestnetwork.com · 27d

Look who came with

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Billy Bragg @billybragg.bsky.social · Sep 15

March route for Wednesday’s Stop Trump demo. Rally in Parliament Square from 5pm to 7pm. Come after work to show your opposition to Trumpismo being imported into the UK by Reform

Stop Trump Coalition @ukstoptrump.bsky.social · Sep 15

FOR WEDNESDAY:

Here is the route of the march against Trump & the far right

GATHER: 2pm Portland Place (BBC)
MARCH: at 3pm
RALLY: 5pm at Parliament Square!!

Route map for Trump not welcome demonstration

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Todd Davies @todddavi.es · 29d

Prof. Fukuyama is on fire (also about antitrust & democracy in the last quarter).

Francis Fukuyama @frankfukuyama.bsky.social · 29d

Our coming plutocracy:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=2wet...

Our Coming Plutocracy

YouTube video by Frankly Fukuyama

www.youtube.com

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Sam Freedman @samfr.bsky.social · Sep 13

There's been a shift towards support to the far right here and it's horrible to see. But this remains a vastly less racist/homophobic/anti-semitic country than it has been in the past.

Which makes it all the odder that our politicians today seem more scared to make the argument.

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Otto English @ottoenglish.bsky.social · Sep 5

This is a huge story.

Don't let him get away with it.

www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

Nigel Farage uses private company to pay less tax on GB News earnings

Exclusive: Reform leader’s use of personal services firm is a practice criticised across the political spectrum

www.theguardian.com

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Todd Davies @todddavi.es · Sep 3

Another aspect of the futility of the Commission's decision to postpone the Google AdTech fine: Member States can, and will, fine Big Tech under domestic law anyway.

Luis Alberto Montezuma 路易斯·阿尔贝托·蒙特祖玛 @montezumachavez.bsky.social · Sep 3

The French DPA fines GOOGLE €325 million for displaying advertisements to Gmail users without consent. lnkd.in/d3n4V6Y3.

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George Monbiot @georgemonbiot.bsky.social · Sep 2

Telling it like it is, and cutting through.

'We’re here to replace you,’ new Green leader Polanski tells Labour as he terms Starmer’s politics ‘despicable’ .
Landslide winner of leadership election says migrants are backbone of UK and his party should not sell out patriotism to Farage

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Saul Staniforth @saulstaniforth.bsky.social · Sep 3

Ed Balls: the Greens taking votes from Labour helps the Tories

@zackpolanski.bsky.social : "I want to see every Labour politician whose voted for a two child benefit cap, for disability cuts, for the ongoing genocide in Gaza to sell arms to them, I want to see them replaced" #GMB

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Max von Thun @maxvonthun.bsky.social · Sep 1

It's only logical that a government which is trampling on the rule of law at home would also try to undermine it abroad. If US corporations refuse to comply with overseas laws then they should lose their market access, it's as simple as that.

WIRED @wired.com · Aug 31

The FTC notified companies like Google, Meta, and Apple that they must not apply the Digital Services Act, which regulates digital platforms, if it jeopardizes the freedom of Americans. www.wired.com/story/big-te...

Big Tech Companies in the US Have Been Told Not to Apply the Digital Services Act

The FTC notified companies like Google, Meta, and Apple that they must not apply the Digital Services Act, which regulates digital platforms, if it jeopardizes the freedom of Americans.

www.wired.com

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