Axios

The ripples of the Supreme Court ruling in favor of American Express could be felt on the West Coast, with some arguing it would make it harder for antitrust enforcers to take on big online platforms like Google, Facebook and Amazon. Many of tech’s most profitable firms have created two-sided markets: Google and Facebook serve consumers on one side and marketers on another. Uber links up riders and drivers. Amazon serves customers and also the merchants who use its platform. All these situations make defining a monopoly more difficult.

When people think about the challenge that Facebook and Twitter pose to our democracy, they don't often think about James Madison and the Federalist Papers. But perhaps they should, argues constitutional scholar Jeff Rosen. Rosen pointed to Madison's writings in No. 55 of the Federalist Papers in arguing against direct democracy. "In all very numerous assemblies, of whatever character composed, passion never fails to wrest the sceptre from reason.

The US is putting up relatively meager competition in a potent new global tech race that, combined with the wave of go-it-alone nationalism led by President Donald Trump, is reshaping global politics and may lead to war, according to a major new report.  In the late 1950s, the US, facing a similar momentous challenge in Sputnik, threw all its resources into a single-minded effort to dominate the future.

For tech executives, the Trump administration's child separation policy provided a moment of clarity when the choice to speak out was relatively easy. But after Trump's executive order, companies were once again struggling to figure out how to respond.

The White House is in the early stages of determining what a federal approach to online data privacy should look like. The preliminary conversations show that the White House wants a voice in the contentious domestic and global debate about how to protect consumer privacy online. Gail Slater, special assistant to President Donald Trump for tech, telecom and cyber policy at the White House National Economic Council, has met with industry groups to discuss possible ways to put in place guardrails for the use of personal data, according to multiple sources familiar with the matter.

AT&T's acquisition of Time Warner will create a media conglomerate that combines premium content with a vast distribution network to deliver it to consumers. One of its first experiments in marrying the two will be a "skinny bundle" called AT&T Watch, providing Time Warner content (minus sports) to mobile customers.

Several major acquisitions have helped Google and Facebook on their way to unprecedented dominance over the advertising supply chain, antitrust analysts argued at the Open Markets Institute forum. There are six acquisitions that experts cited as missed opportunities by regulators at the Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission to curb the advertising market dominance of Google and Facebook.