Hub-Contestability: A New Antitrust Paradigm for Platform Competition

Abstract This article champions a new paradigm—hub-contestability—to counter the threat posed by network effects entrenching dominant platforms. Although prior work has shown that competition over highly connected hubs operating on platforms (“hub-plucking”) can breach the seemingly insurmountable competitive moat arising from network effects, this article confronts the risk that dominant platforms will act to eliminate this potent mode of competition. The article identifies three primary types of tactics that dominant platforms may deploy to neutralize their exposure to hub-plucking. First, platforms may engage in “hub-locking” through acquisitions of hubs and long-term exclusivity arrangements, thereby precluding hubs from operating across rival platforms. Second, platforms may engage in “hub-crushing,” either by restricting application programming interface access—thereby suffocating the lifeline of hubs—or by replicating their functionalities while simultaneously disadvantaging them within the platform. Third, platform design choices may suppress the emergence of hubs, preventing the scaling necessary to transform ordinary platform participants into entities of meaningful competitive significance. Fusing network science and contestability theory, the hub-contestability paradigm aims to hone antitrust law to thwart such tactics, thereby ensuring that hubs remain sufficiently “contestable” to sustain a dynamic competitive landscape. Embracing this paradigm will streamline antitrust’s hitherto cumbersome decision-making in complex platform cases. It will recalibrate antitrust’s various doctrines, from merger-control through the prohibitions on abusive conduct to the employment of remedies, to foster vibrant inter-platform competition.