Google, Facebook, Apple, Amazon & Co. They are the new big monopolists. With one peculiarity: "But when in history have we ever seen such popular monopolists?". The answer must be sought in the fact that "they are so absolute that they win the most difficult game without fanfare: that of consensus". So here is the first paradox: highly concentrated monopolists but accepted, loved by the consumers over whom they dominate. They write it in their new essay in pamphlet form Stefano Mannoni and Guido Stazi – the first university professor and former commissioner of the Communications Authority; the second executive at the top of authorities such as Agcom, in fact, and then Consob and the Antitrust. In 107 intense pages “Is competition a click away? Challenge to monopoly in the digital age” (Scientific Editorial) starts from the sentence pronounced by the CEO of Google Eric Schmidt in front of the US Senate (who claimed that competition was just a click away) to dismantle all the myths of the digital giants: from the "myth of the garage" to the "myth of gratuitousness", passing through "ancient and modern discrimination" and then ending up attacking the centralizing concentrations. The book will be presented in Rome on Friday 19 October, at 16 pm, in the Calazzo hall of the Faculty of Law at Sapienza.
The dangers of this new and never experienced situation are already evident. “Internet is a medium – reads the book – which acts on emotions rather than on deliberative rationality. Those who navigate seek the affirmation of their a priori judgments (or indeed prejudices), rather than opening up to the questioning of their own vision in dialectic with other points of view. Politics is transformed into a sport in which fans oppose each other without the mediation of that space for discussion and mediation which is, or rather was, the public sphere".
The conclusion is simple: “The large digital platforms are not monopolists just because they concentrate enormous economic and informational power. They are because they own the social infrastructure. Stated differently, their strength is rooted in both the structure and the superstructure. The conclusion is that thepublic authority, for what is left of it, cannot remain indifferent. Hence the need for the Antitrust to move from its torpor".
The Microsoft case – which set the standard for the mega fine of half a billion (followed by two more of 280 and 899 million) applied by the then European Commissioner for Competition, Mario Monti – is the example to which Mannioni and Stazi refer. The entire pamphlet is a clear invitation to the Antitrust, European in this case, to rediscover the path "of imposing sanctions, serving as a muzzle to their recipients but also as a warning pour encourager les autres". The large digital platforms are the protagonists of the "most all-encompassing, unprecedented and dangerous manifestation of monopoly that Western civilization has ever known". Authorities wake up, Mannoni and Stazi shout loudly.
