Meet FTC's Lina Khan, the woman who is making Zuckerberg and Bezos nervous

Meet the woman who is making Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg nervous. Columbia University Law professor Lina Khan became Chairperson of the Federal Trade Commission in June 2021.

Not long after being appointed to lead the Federal Trade Commission, Amazon and Facebook filed petitions to disqualify the FTC from investigating the companies, citing Khan’s previous antitrust views as proof that she couldn’t be unbiased to them.

US Senator Elizabeth Warren and other supporters of Khan dismissed the recusal, arguing that big tech companies were seeking to ‘bully’ the chairwoman.

Lina Khan was born in London, England, in 1989 to Pakistani parents. Her family moved to the United States when she was 11. She went on to study at Williams College and Yale University.

Khan has identified herself as being part of the New Brandeis Movement, also called ‘Hipster antitrust’. They argue that modern antitrust laws are too focused on market prices and consumer rights and not on the unfair advantages monopolies and oligopolies have in competition.

The name comes from early 20th century US Supreme Justice Louis Brandeis, a champion of antitrust laws who considered that no company should be too dominant within their respective market since it harmed free competition, innovation, and worker’s rights.

This is exemplified in Khan’s scholarly paper ‘Amazon’s Antitrust Paradox’. The New York Times described her paper, published in 2017 in the Yale Law Journal, as “redefining decades of monopoly law”.

Khan argued that just because a large, dominant company keeps the prices low and the customers happy, then it shouldn't be given a free pass to be powerful enough to dictate the rules of the market.

According to The Guardian, Khan claimed in her paper that the rise of tech megacorporations such as Google, Facebook, and, above all, Amazon, were proof that antitrust laws in the US had to change for the digital age.

“The long-term interests of consumers include product quality, variety, and innovation – factors best promoted through both a robust competitive process and open markets,” the FTC Chairperson wrote.

It’s no secret that Amazon has become Khan’s main target. The online retail giant founded by Jeff Bezos employs over half a million people and powers a good deal of the internet itself through its cloud computing division, as The New York Times points out.

Amazon briefly became the second corporation in the world to be worth over one trillion US dollars. To put that into perspective, the company’s revenue overpassed the money made by Twitter, Facebook, and Google put together.

The online retail company founded by Jeff Bezos has also faced harsh criticism over the treatment of its employees, with accusations of record-time delivery rates put above the well-being of the workers.

An article penned by The Guardian back in March 2021 describes Amazon drivers working 14-hour work shifts with no bathroom breaks, and the situation in the warehouses doesn’t seem any better.

The company has also become well-known for its anti-union policies. It was only in April 2022 that the first unionized Amazon warehouse was approved, after years of legal confrontations.

The Chair of the Federal Trade Commission had a promising start, but there's still a long way to go. She has expressed interest in data privacy and regulating how tech companies make use of it. Let's see how Lina Khan can really change things around Silicon Valley.