I’m having a lot of trouble parsing any of this.

In what sense does the election being over render it not a matter of picking? Slater’s selection is a nomination, you could select one person at the expense of another, to better or worse ends, so in any ordinary english language sense, there is indeed a pick.

By contrast, Lori Chavez-DeRemer was selected for labor secretary, which has been celebrated by people who are normally Trump critics. Because there are such things as better or worse picks.

With regards of antitrust and big tech, Trump can do nothing, worse or better.

Again: what? Trump gets to appoint the DoJ’s Attorney General, Deputy Attorney General, Associate Attorney General, Solicitor General, 93 DoJ Attorneys, heads of a bunch of individual departments in the DoJ which each have hundreds of staff, and will likely appoint hundreds of new judges. Not only can Trump do something, his actions will be the single most dominating force determining the trajectory of anti-trust environment.

What’s more, as a commenter above noted, Lina Kahn is a perfect example of how influential these appointments can be, as we’ve seen some of the most ambitious anti-trust action in decades.

If “big tech is not restrained” it’s going to be the same or worse, so why we wouldn’t be happy at least if that happens?

They’re probably not even right, in the first instance, that big tech will be better restrained. The elephant in the room rendering this whole line of thinking preposterous, is Lina Khan’s extremely aggressive record on this won’t be matched even by a “good” Trump appointee, and in fact has been vehemently opposed by R’s through her whole tenure.

I didn’t read a celebration of Trump as a win for human rights tout court, which could have prompted this response

Right, but that’s the point. Nobody would credit Trump as a champion of human rights, which reveals why it’s so short-sighted to uphold him or R’s as leading lights on a topic such as privacy, which falls under the umbrella of a subject matter that we’re all agreeing he doesn’t care about.

It’s precisely because of the absence of consistent commitments on every other front that also belongs in the same category, that of human rights writ large, that it’s silly to celebrate the one exception to an otherwise negative record. And it’s hard to take statements seriously that treat that totality as if it embodies a pure commitment to virtues of an ideal, free and open internet.