Great numbers of ex-Twitter users and employees are making a new home in the “fediverse,” fleeing the chaos of Elon Musk’s takeover. This exodus includes prominent figures from civil society, tech law and policy, business and journalism. It also represents a rare opportunity to make a better corner of the internet…if we don’t screw it up.

The fediverse isn’t a single, gigantic social media platform like Facebook or Twitter. It’s an expanding ecosystem of interconnected social media sites and services that let people interact with each other no matter which one of these sites and services they have an account with.

That means that people can tailor and better control their experience of social media, and be less reliant on a monoculture sown by a handful of tech giants.

The major platforms have already screwed it up, but now we have the chance to get it right and build something better.
Today’s most popular fediverse service is called Mastodon. Mastodon is a Twitter-like service anyone can host and alter to suit their needs. Each server (or “instance”) can experiment and build its own experience for users, and those users aren’t stuck using services they don’t like just because their contacts are on that service.

Mastodon is just one corner of the fediverse, and it might not be for everyone. More importantly, Mastodon runs on an open protocol called ActivityPub– a powerful and flexible way to link up all kinds of services and systems. This means all the features of Mastodon are just a sliver of a vast universe of interoperable services...

To be clear: no technology can save us from ourselves, but building a more interoperable social media environment may be a chance to have a do-over on the current lock-in model. It could be awesome, if we don’t screw it up.

... corporate America – and its aligned trade groups – used their lobbying power to thwart almost all attempts by Congress to curb price gouging and profiteering.

This analysis focuses on lobbyist engagements, which are instances in which a company, trade group, or non-profit, hires a lobbyist to lobby for or against a bill. Our key findings include:

Those opposing anti-price gouging and profiteering bills were responsible for more than 2,600 lobbyist engagements on Capitol Hill. Supporters were responsible for fewer than 300, giving those opposed to anti-price gouging legislation a 9-to-1 advantage.

Two of the country’s largest corporate trade associations opposed to the anti-price gouging bills in this analysis, PhRMA and the Chamber of Commerce, blanketed Capitol Hill with more or almost as many lobbyist engagements as the supporters of all of the bills combined. PhRMA was responsible for 436 engagements, 1.5 times more than all the bill supporters combined (286). The Chamber was responsible for 274, nearly as many as the bill supporters.

H.R.3, the Elijah E. Cummings’ Lower Drug Costs Now Act (the signature drug pricing reform bill of the Democrats in the House) resulted in 1,157 lobbyist engagements, the most of any bill in this analysis. 96% of the engagements (1,110) came from corporations, trade groups, and non-profits opposed to the bill, giving the opposition a 24-to-1 advantage.

Corporations Have Taken Advantage of Rising Prices, Supply Chain Disruptions, and the War in Ukraine to Boost Prices and Pad Their Bottom Lines

Since September of 2021, prices for everything from essential household items, to food, to cars and gas have been on the rise. Overall inflation – as measured by the Consumer Price Index (CPI) – has risen 8.2% and in key areas rising prices have squeezed household budgets and driven hardship for low and moderate-income families. Prices for food, housing, and energy, have shot up 11.2%, 6.6%, and 19.8%, respectively, over the same time period.[1]...

9-to-1: Those Opposing Anti-Price Gouging and Profiteering Bills Blanketed Capitol Hill With More Than 2,600 Lobbyist Engagements, Bill Supporters Accounted for Fewer Than 300...

PhRMA and The Chamber of Commerce Produced More or Almost as Many Lobbyist Engagements as The Entities in Support of All the Bills, Combined...

Entities Opposed to the Bills Have Spent $820 Million on Political Activity During the 2022 Cycle Thus Far, Six Times More Than Supporters...


Conclusion

Failing to address inflation and its underlying drivers will mean more hardship for everyday people while powerful corporations and their shareholders continue to reap the rewards. Tackling the drivers of high prices – the pandemic, supply chain disruptions and the war in Ukraine – is important, and policymakers have already made some positive strides toward addressing these very issues.

In August of this year, Congress passed the Inflation Reduction Act.[24] The drug pricing provisions included in the bill will help combat some drug price gouging. The bill empowers Medicare to negotiate drug prices on a limited number of older drugs, with the first set of negotiated prices available to patients beginning in 2026.

The bill also requires drug manufacturers to pay rebates to Medicare if they increase prices faster than inflation and it caps the cost of a monthly supply of insulin at $35 for Medicare patients. It redesigns the Medicare Part D benefit to provide more incentive for Part D plans to obtain lower prices and cover lower-cost medicines, and puts in place a $2,000 annual out-of-pocket cap for all beneficiaries.

While the Inflation Reduction Act is a big step in the right direction and a major blow to the pharmaceutical industry, it has its limits and more can be done. Beyond pharmaceuticals, lawmakers must understand how outsized corporate power has allowed large corporations across many sectors to take advantage of consumers in this moment and act accordingly. Tackling pandemic profiteering and building a healthy, resilient economy requires checking the outsized power that megacorporations hold over our economy. Congress must do its part to address corporate concentration and rein in the unchecked power that these megacorporations exert on prices and our democracy.

Congress should ensure rigorous competition in key product markets at critical nodes along the supply chain by curtailing mergers that further concentrate industries or by breaking up monopolies. The passage of the Ocean Shipping Reform Act, for example, is an encouraging development that will help to re-regulate the large ocean shipping monopolies that are stoking inflation and gumming up critical points in our supply chain.

Lawmakers must strengthen antitrust laws already on the books and continue to urge the FTC to use their existing authority to crack down on extractive and exploitative business practices, including price gouging, as well as further empower regulators at both the state and federal level to identify price gouging and protect consumers. This should include a federal price gouging statute to curtail exploitative pricing during emergencies and targeted price controls where appropriate.

Policymakers should also consider enacting an excess profits tax to reduce the incentive for companies to engage in profiteering behavior as any outsized profits that accrue over a certain threshold are taxed away and diverted to public coffers. Such an approach is not new – as recently as the 1980s, the US had in place a windfall profits tax on oil companies.[25]

Furthermore, spending activity to influence legislation should not be so difficult to uncover. The Lobbying Disclosure Act (LDA) should capture campaign ads and other grass-roots activities that call upon the public to contact government officials to influence legislation as reportable lobbying activities. The DISCLOSE Act – legislation that would require non-profits to disclose their sources of funds used for political purposes and bring an end to dark money – should become the law of the land. President Biden should also exercise executive authority to issue the proposed executive order requiring government contractors to disclose their political spending.

To accomplish this, elected officials must push back against the lobbying onslaught by corporations very much invested in maintaining the status quo.

Two of Mr. Smith’s more notable corruption cases against high-profile political figures had opposite results. His team initially won a conviction against the former Gov. Robert McDonnell of Virginia, a Republican, but the Supreme Court overturned it.

It also won a conviction of former Representative Rick Renzi, Republican of Arizona, who was sentenced to three years in prison. (Mr. Trump pardoned Mr. Renzi among a flurry of clemency actions in January 2021, in his last hours as president.)

When Mr. Smith took over the public integrity section, it was reeling from the collapse of a criminal case against former Senator Ted Stevens, Republican of Alaska. In Mr. Smith’s first few months on the job, the section closed several prominent investigations into members of Congress without charges.

But in an interview that year with The New York Times, Mr. Smith denied that the section on his watch had lost its nerve.

“I understand why the question is asked,” Mr. Smith said at the time. “But if I were the sort of person who could be cowed — ‘I know we should bring this case, I know the person did it, but we could lose, and that will look bad’ — I would find another line of work. I can’t imagine how someone who does what I do or has worked with me could think that.”