antitrust
Bulletins

The DOJ wants to block Visa's Plaid acquisition

The DOJ wants to block Visa's Plaid acquisition

A new lawsuit could halt Visa's $5.3 billion acquisition of Plaid.

Photo: Stephen Phillips/Unsplash

The Justice Department filed an antitrust lawsuit on Thursday, alleging that Visa's proposed acquisition of Plaid would limit competition.

In a statement, the DOJ said, "Visa seeks to buy Plaid — as its CEO said — as an 'insurance policy' to neutralize a 'threat to our important US debit business.'" The argument seems to be that Plaid, which helps connect financial companies to each other, would help Visa maintain a monopoly in online debit transactions.

The suit could halt the $5.3 billion acquisition, which was set to be one of the biggest fintech deals yet. In a statement, Visa said the the DOJ's attempt is "legally flawed and contradicted by the facts."

 Shakeel Hashim

Shakeel Hashim ( @shakeelhashim) is a growth manager at Protocol, based in London. He was previously an analyst at Finimize covering business and economics, and a digital journalist at News UK. His writing has appeared in The Economist and its book, Uncommon Knowledge.

visa plaid fintech antitrust

With Andrew Bosworth, Facebook just appointed a metaverse CTO

The AR/VR executive isn't just putting a focus on Facebook's hardware efforts, but on a future without the big blue app.

Andrew Bosworth has led Facebook's hardware efforts. As the company's CTO, he's expected to put a major focus on the metaverse.

Photo: Christian Charisius/Getty Images

Facebook is getting ready for the metaverse: The company's decision to replace outgoing CTO Mike "Schrep" Schroepfer with hardware SVP Andrew "Boz" Bosworth is not only a signal that the company is committed to AR and VR for years to come; it also shows that Facebook execs see the metaverse as a foundational technology, with the potential to eventually replace current cash cows like the company's core "big blue" Facebook app.

Bosworth has been with Facebook since 2006 and is among Mark Zuckerberg's closest allies, but he's arguably gotten the most attention for leading the company's AR/VR and consumer hardware efforts.

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Janko Roettgers

Janko Roettgers (@jank0) is a senior reporter at Protocol, reporting on the shifting power dynamics between tech, media, and entertainment, including the impact of new technologies. Previously, Janko was Variety's first-ever technology writer in San Francisco, where he covered big tech and emerging technologies. He has reported for Gigaom, Frankfurter Rundschau, Berliner Zeitung, and ORF, among others. He has written three books on consumer cord-cutting and online music and co-edited an anthology on internet subcultures. He lives with his family in Oakland.

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Protocol | Fintech

Here’s everything going wrong at Binance

Binance trades far more crypto than rivals like Coinbase and FTX. Its regulatory challenges and legal issues in the U.S., EU and China loom just as large.

Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao is overseeing a global crypto empire with global problems.

Photo: Akio Kon/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Binance, the largest global crypto exchange, has been hit by a raft of regulatory challenges worldwide that only seem to increase.

It's the biggest example of what worries regulators in crypto: unfettered investor access to a range of digital tokens finance officials have never heard of, without the traditional investor protections of regulated markets.

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Tomio Geron

Tomio Geron ( @tomiogeron) is a San Francisco-based reporter covering fintech. He was previously a reporter and editor at The Wall Street Journal, covering venture capital and startups. Before that, he worked as a staff writer at Forbes, covering social media and venture capital, and also edited the Midas List of top tech investors. He has also worked at newspapers covering crime, courts, health and other topics. He can be reached at tgeron@protocol.com or tgeron@protonmail.com.

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Protocol | Policy

Facebook’s scandals have obliterated any goodwill left in Congress

Lawmakers were supposed to wade into questions about Big Data's effect on competition. Instead, their vitriol at Facebook was unending.

Image: Alexander Shatov/Unsplash

In the wake of last week's damning series of reports about Facebook, senators at a hearing that was initially supposed to be about competition instead unleashed their ire on the firm, comparing it to Big Tobacco, suggesting it lied to Congress and all but accusing the social network of profiting off teens' anxiety and suicidal thoughts.

The bipartisan parade of fury on a politically salient issue lasted hours on Tuesday. Senators focused particularly on a Wall Street Journal report about the company's careful research into the corrosive effect of Instagram on young users' mental health. But the show, coming during a hearing that was supposed to examine the impact of Big Data on competition, was also the latest evidence that Congress' periodic fits of anger at tech companies and the way Facebook obsessively deflects can create a loop that gets in the way of what Washington actually wants to do.

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Ben Brody

Ben Brody (@ BenBrodyDC) is a senior reporter at Protocol focusing on how Congress, courts and agencies affect the online world we live in. He formerly covered tech policy and lobbying (including antitrust, Section 230 and privacy) at Bloomberg News, where he previously reported on the influence industry, government ethics and the 2016 presidential election. Before that, Ben covered business news at CNNMoney and AdAge, and all manner of stories in and around New York. He still loves appearing on the New York news radio he grew up with.

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apps

How tech is inventing better ways to read the internet

The market for read-later apps is heating up again, and the apps are much smarter this time.

The reading experience of the internet sucks. But some startups are trying to fix it.

Illustration: cihanterlan/Getty Images and Protocol

The internet, as a reading experience, is mostly terrible. The heavy pages riddled with ads and trackers, the unexpected pop-ups, the bespoke designs that in too many places end up broken. Over the years, many have tried to fix this problem — Google with AMP, Facebook with Instant Articles — and none have succeeded. It can often feel like things just keep getting worse.

Ben Springwater certainly felt like things were getting worse. In 2016, he was working at Nextdoor, lamenting with one of his colleagues, Rob Mackenzie, that reading on the internet was so complicated. The reading experience was part of the problem, but so was the internet's unlimited supply of stuff. "It completely boggles the mind that so much of this stuff is really excellent, this life-changing stuff we could read," Springwater said. But there's only so much time in the day. "So we have filters: We go to Twitter, we check the headlines or what comes into our inbox. But those decisions for most of us are really suboptimal, relative to the potential of what we could be reading."

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David Pierce

David Pierce ( @pierce) is Protocol's editor at large. Prior to joining Protocol, he was a columnist at The Wall Street Journal, a senior writer with Wired, and deputy editor at The Verge. He owns all the phones.

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