I don't really understand what you mean by "testing theories and novel legal tactics after the fact." In this case, there are no novel legal tactics as far as I can see, and the only theory tested is the one continuously tested by the FTC and DOJ since 1914. If there wasn't a plausible claim here, a judge would have dismissed it prior to discovery.
The problem, I think, is that Amazon likely violated the law. They did this because normally they could get away with it - that doesn't change the violation, it means that prior enforcement sucked. It's like speeding; you do it, sometimes you get caught, normally you don't. If suddenly everyone got pulled over despite only going 5 over the limit people would be upset, but they would still have broken the law. It wouldn't be in bad faith.
So the FTC is indeed saying 'look at all the companies that are being suppressed,' precisely because that is the law. Section 2 of the Clayton Act, for example, makes it illegal for companies to engage in anti-competitive practices. The FTC is alleging that Amazon engaged in anti-competitive practices.
The funniest part to me on here is, nobody is even arguing that they didn't. The only argument people are making is "I like Amazon, it makes products cheap!"
That's fine, and courts should and do take that into account, but they still broke the law. They didn't break FTC regulations passed by Lena Khan, they broke a law that has been in force since 1914. The problem Amazon has now is that 'we make things cheaper' only works so long as they actually are making things cheaper, and it should only work so long as they aren't in the process of or have not completed monopolization. They are charged with anti-competitive behavior and price-manipulation and they have market power in the e-commerce market.
>We’re in need of good regulation of big tech, this is ultimately going to damage that effort. It’s not in good faith.
I completely disagree. This is what good regulation of big companies looks like. It's just foreign because we haven't seen it since before this era of mass concentration of industry.