Professor John Newman’s article “Attention Capitalism: The Law and Political Economy of Attention Markets,” was recently accepted for publication by Stanford Law Review. The article explores how the U.S. legal system has treated attention markets, in which people exchange their attention for access to things like social media, online searches, and more. A surprisingly wide variety of laws, from antitrust and privacy to contract and tax, have funneled activity into attention markets and concentrated power among a few Big Tech companies. The article proposes a broad overhaul of U.S. law to deconcentrate these markets. It is expected to be published in early 2026.
Newman served as deputy director of the Federal Trade Commission Bureau of Competition and as a trial attorney with the U.S. Department of Justice Antitrust Division. He currently sits on the advisory boards for the American Antitrust Institute and the Institute for Consumer Antitrust Studies, is an assistant editor of the Antitrust Law Journal, and was a fellow with the Thurman Arnold Project at Yale.
Newman’s scholarly articles have appeared or are forthcoming in the Stanford Law Review, Texas Law Review, University of Pennsylvania Law Review, Washington University Law Review, Vanderbilt Law Review, George Washington Law Review, and other leading academic journals.
