On Wednesday, Facebook followed Amazon's lead and filed a motion pleading for FTC Chair Lina Khan to be recused from any antitrust investigations and decisions targeting the company.“Chair Khan has consistently made public statements not only accusing Facebook of conduct that merits disapproval but specifically expressing her belief that the conduct meets the elements of an antitrust offense,” the company said in the petition.The move comes two weeks after Amazon filed a similar motion with the FTC, arguing that Khan's years of research and scholarship on Amazon’s antitrust position had turned her into the company's "adversary-in-chief" and incapable of hearing the company's legal arguments with "an open mind."That two tech giants are now lined up behind the idea that the new FTC head, who was selected for the position largely based on her work on Big Tech monopolies, at a time when politicians of all stripes have the industry in their sights, is a fairly bald-faced move. Without Khan, the FTC would be deadlocked 2-2- between Republicans and Democrats. Indeed, the companies’ behavior stark contrast to when the government is being stuffed with their own people. When former Facebook executives ran Joe Biden's transition team, the company did not complain about bias or appearances. When a former Facebook lobbyist was named to a powerful senior role in the administration, again the company did not complain. Don’t expect them to any time soon: Facebook and the rest of Silicon Valley have been angling to staff the administration with insiders and former executives since the start of Biden’s term. Facebook did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Khan’s great transgression is that she spent years trying to understand the history of antitrust law, the political economy of corporate power in this country, and found that some of the largest corporations in the world—namely Big Tech giants—were able to grow and act the way they did because antitrust law was not being properly enforced. She published this work in well-respected academic forums. It’s as simple as that. Earlier this year Susan Davies, a former Facebook lawyer who defended them in an antitrust lawsuit, was being considered for the still-vacant position of head of the Department of Justice's antitrust division; is there any reason to believe Facebook would’ve opposed Davies’s nomination or sought a recusal on the grounds that she has "already drawn factual and legal conclusions" about whether the company was complying with antitrust law? Doubtful. Silicon Valley has no qualms with the hiring of former lobbyists, executives, or insiders who share company views, it’s only when regulators have their own ideas that the industry gets angry.
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