There are some people and organizations whose influence we would like to acknowledge.
- Dan Luu and his post titled The Googlebot Monopoly. His post was the spark that got us going down this path.
- Lina Khan and her amazing work, exemplified by her excellent Amazon’s Antitrust Paradox. We aspire to approach Google with the broad lens that she offered for Amazon.
- All the people who kept saying “nationalize Google” and “we need a public cache” on Twitter, Hacker News, webmaster forums, and comment sections. It got frustrating that nobody had any plans about how to do it or justification about why it was necessary and that frustration fueled much of the early work on this project.
- Elizabeth Warren and her plan for regulating Big Tech. We began formulating our own plan in earnest after seeing in the proposal that the only imagined regulation for Google was smashing it apart, and hoping that competition fell out of that.
- Ben Thompson and his Aggregation Theory. In terms of his theory, we believe that the key to regulating some types of Aggregators is recognizing how the costs of being aggregated motivates producers of content to limit the amount they are aggregated overall, creating a natural monopoly on the collection and aggregation of certain types of content. Thank you to Ben for the language and framework for thinking about this.
- Matt Bruenig and the People’s Policy Project. PPP is a wonderful project and the source of much inspiration for our thinking about research and organizational forms.
- Many people from the Democratic Socialists of America have been incredibly helpful in discussing and advancing this project over the past several years. Much of the spirit of the Knucklehead’s Club comes from experiences in DSA, so if you like what we are saying, you should join DSA and join in the fight for a broader democratic socialist society.
- Finally, we want to thank the members of the Knuckleheads’ Club. Their contributions make this all possible and without them this work would not have happened. We’re incredibly grateful to them for their support and we invite you to join them as a member if you haven’t already.