[untog]

Who is "we", exactly? No-one is ignoring telecom monopolies, it's something people complain about all the damn time. Spoiler alert: it's because the telecom industry has spent decades embedding itself at the top levels of organizations like the FCC, and it's gotten worse since the arrival of the Trump administration. Is that good? No. Should we change it? Yes. Does any of this have anything to do with regulating big tech? No.

This stuff just feels like whataboutism to me. There's no reason we can't tackle both big tech and telecom. If wait turns then the telecom industry will just say "what about other utilities!". Those utilities will say "what about the defense industry!" or whatever the hell.

"What about these bad guys!!" just feels like an attempt to deflect attention away from tech.

[adrianmonk]

The allegation here isn't that the average person is ignoring it, it's that the administration is giving preferential treatment. The government is supposed to be representative of the people, so I think that's why they're calling it "we".

[stvswn]

It's not really, because the two (telecom and big tech) are in a fight for dominance and focusing on one will benefit the other. It's natural to wonder about the influence of telecom when the Attorney General, under whom the DOJ's investigation is being conducted, was the general counsel of GTE/Verizon for 14 years and then served on Time Warner's board until last year, helping them to merge with AT&T. If you assume the antitrust division of the DOJ has limited resources, and that they were until recently focused on telecom, it's not "whataboutism" to wonder what's driving the abrupt shift to tech.

[stvswn]

and to be explicit, the "we" is the FTC and the antitrust division of the DOJ.