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With the FTC in particular, neither party wanted the FTC to be aggressive. Biden wanted to appoint someone else but had all his appointments blocked by the far-right. Lina Khan got in because populists (left and right) saw her as a weapon that could be wielded against Big Tech.

There's actually a big cloud hanging over the Kamala Harris candidacy over whether or not Lina Khan will remain FTC chair. There's a lot of tech money flooding into her campaign. Though in this case it's also to replace the current SEC chair, because the SEC chair is actually enforcing securities law against crypto fraudsters, who would really like to keep their scam going.

Same with Trump. Big Tech banned him for, y'know, instigating a coup d'etat. But three years later, Big Tech is now trying to wine and dine him, because the FTC is scaring the shit out of Big Tech. You have Tim Cook going to Trump and Trump saying how he's going to stop the EU from attacking US companies. Hell, Elon Musk bought Twitter just so he could turn it into an arm of the Trump candidacy. And who knows what Mark Zuckerberg thinks. Likewise, with the SEC stuff, Trump used to be a (rightful) big critic of crypto, until he realized he could make money selling tacky NFTs of himself, and is now also trying to get in on that crypto money.




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