What Times-Picayune Tells Us About the Antitrust Analysis of Attention Platforms

Times-Picayune, a 1953 Supreme Court decision involving newspapers, has gained notoriety from the Court’s American Express decision concerning credit-card networks. The Amex dissent argued that the Court had already decided how to apply the rule-of-reason analysis to two-sided platforms in Times-Picayune, and got it right then, but got it wrong in Amex. Times-Picayune is a shaky foundation for that proposition. In that case, the Government had alleged per se tying involving advertising and mon