Facebook's Co-Founder Is Now Lobbying the Government To Break Up The Company (arstechnica.com) 71
Facebook cofounder Chris Hughes isn't just idly wondering if regulators might break up the tech behemoth he helped launch. He's going on a personal tour, meeting with state and federal officials to lay out in detail the way he thinks it could be done.
Hughes has met with members of Congress, the Justice Department's Antitrust Division, the Federal Trade Commission, and the office of New York Attorney General Letitia James to make a detailed case arguing Facebook is too big for its own good, according to separate reports from The Washington Post and The New York Times. The breakup tour went public in May, when Hughes penned a lengthy op-ed in The New York Times saying his former colleague Mark Zuckerberg wielded too much power. "I'm disappointed in myself and the early Facebook team for not thinking more about how the News Feed algorithm could change our culture, influence elections and empower nationalist leaders," Hughes wrote at the time. "And I'm worried that Mark has surrounded himself with a team that reinforces his beliefs instead of challenging them."
Tech and antitrust law experts Scott Hemphill and Tim Wu had already been working on a detailed case against Facebook, and they reached out to Hughes following his public turn. The trio now work together to make their case.
They're now arguing that Facebook's "serial defensive acquisitions" are preventing competition. The article points out Facebook has acquired more than 75 smaller companies over the last 15 years, and cites one negotiator who told the Economist that "Big tech firms have been known to intimidate startups into agreeing to a sale..."
Hughes has met with members of Congress, the Justice Department's Antitrust Division, the Federal Trade Commission, and the office of New York Attorney General Letitia James to make a detailed case arguing Facebook is too big for its own good, according to separate reports from The Washington Post and The New York Times. The breakup tour went public in May, when Hughes penned a lengthy op-ed in The New York Times saying his former colleague Mark Zuckerberg wielded too much power. "I'm disappointed in myself and the early Facebook team for not thinking more about how the News Feed algorithm could change our culture, influence elections and empower nationalist leaders," Hughes wrote at the time. "And I'm worried that Mark has surrounded himself with a team that reinforces his beliefs instead of challenging them."
Tech and antitrust law experts Scott Hemphill and Tim Wu had already been working on a detailed case against Facebook, and they reached out to Hughes following his public turn. The trio now work together to make their case.
They're now arguing that Facebook's "serial defensive acquisitions" are preventing competition. The article points out Facebook has acquired more than 75 smaller companies over the last 15 years, and cites one negotiator who told the Economist that "Big tech firms have been known to intimidate startups into agreeing to a sale..."
Hilarious Spin (Score:2, Insightful)
I'm disappointed in myself and the early Facebook team for not thinking more about how the News Feed algorithm could change our culture, influence elections and empower nationalist leaders," Hughes wrote at the time.
Yes, write another ten thousand articles about how the problem with Big Tech's power isn't that they're wholly leftist and intent on suppressing dissidents, but that they're not trying to manipulate and propagandize the news enough.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
It's one thing to get all your opinions and talking points from liberal comedians, but it's another to get them from liberal comedians from the distant past.
>the truth has a liberal bias.
Uh huh. Tell us the one about Russian collusion again.
Re: Hilarious Spin (Score:1)
Do stupid cutesy and verifiably false memes make you feel clever? Did you just score a point in your lefty echo chamber?
If you had something intelligent and well sourced you might convince someone. Your crap will only get Trump re-elected.
Why can't you leftist morons see how obnoxious and off putting you are to normal people?
I'm an independent voter. I did not vote in 2016 because I didn't like either candidate. But voting with 60m morons like you in 2020? Seems unlikely. At least the right wingers tr
Re:Hilarious Spin (Score:4, Interesting)
Indeed. The suppression of unpopular ideas by Big Tech is far more of a threat than Russian "fake news".
Facebook should be a platform, not a gatekeeper.
It is an exaggeration to call Chris Hughes a "co-founder". He was a beta-tester, and otherwise contributed nothing. Chris argued for keeping Facebook "Harvard only", and thought that other universities would obviously just create their own social networks.
So he was wrong about everything, and Facebook is where it is today because he was ignored.
I recommend that we continue to ignore him.
Re: (Score:1)
The world would be a better place without the proliferation of Facebook. Chris Hughes tried to save us.
Re: Hilarious Spin (Score:2)
Despite the emotional reason for this gent's dissatisfaction, he's spot on correct about the problem with Faceboot. Concentration of ownership and abusive monopoly power.
The ghost of Thurman Arnold has been seen in Menlo Park. Get ready Faceboot Nazis, the trustbusters are coming.
Re: (Score:2)
Why is it fine for Fox? Why is Microsoft still around in one piece?
Because neither Fox nor Microsoft have anything even vaguely resembling a monopoly in the spaces in which they work?
Re: (Score:1)
Neither is Facebook, or any other content provider. Service provision is another story.
Re: So why isn't it a problem for TWC/Cobcast (Score:2)
"Why is Microsoft still around in one piece?"
Because under President GW Bush, the Justice Department dropped the antitrust case against Microsoft.
First time ever someone has a comment I love (Score:1)
Re: Am I the only one who finds this terrifying? (Score:5, Insightful)
That's why the right solution is to break up the big tech monopolies. NOT place them under consent decrees (i.e. government control) but allow them to stay together.
Faceboot should never have been allowed to buy up 75 competitors. Google should never have been allowed to buy up 200 competitors.
Break up the monopolies. Decentralize power. Restore freedom.
Re: Am I the only one who finds this terrifying? (Score:3)
The government is not a monolith, AC. We do still have some good anti-monopoly laws on the books. The big question is whether they will be effectively enforced.
How will it help? (Score:3)
I don't see how breaking the company up will do anything to fix the unfettered business model.
It's actually the advertising that's driving all this. That's where the problem lies. Things like tracking and liking and opt-out and push tech in general.
Re: How will it help? (Score:2)
A multi-pronged approach is required.
Absolutely, corporate snooping of everybody's private data is a pernicious evil, and should be banned under criminal not civil law. AND the Big Tech monopolists should be broken up.
Both of these are important if we want to continue as a free country with a democratic from of government.
But how? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
The reason is this: before Sarbanes Oxeley, companies that were worth $300million would go public, and cash out that way. But SOX is so complicated it is a real disincentive to going public. So now companies in that size range prefer to b
Re: But how? (Score:3)
In order to corner the market on social media, Faceboot bought up 75 of their competitors. Most famously Instagram and WhatsApp.
Breaking up Faceboot means divesting it of the companies it swallowed. And restraining it from buying up the next competitor that comes along.
Re: (Score:2)
In order to corner the market on social media, Faceboot bought up 75 of their competitors. Most famously Instagram and WhatsApp.
Breaking up Faceboot means divesting it of the companies it swallowed. And restraining it from buying up the next competitor that comes along.
Or, you know, the competitors could simply choose not to sell to them. Crazy, right?
Re: But how? (Score:2)
Yup, totally crazy, completely unrealistic.
First, you're expecting companies to forgo huge profits for the sake of the public good. Nope, that's not how business works.
Second, behind most of these so-called startups lurks the Sandhill Road money cartel. The cartel's basic model is to use disposable startups to fish for users; and when a startup has attracted enough users, merge it into the monopoly for monetization. Monopoly profits allow the cartel funded startups to engage in anti-competitive business pra
Re: (Score:2)
You wouldn't split the user base in two. You'd split the company by function. News feed. Advertising branch. R&D. Financial services (the facecoin). Hosting. Data centers. Cabling. Self-driving cars, you name it. Yes, one split branch would deliver services to the second (or third or..), but the idea is that other suppliers could be taken into account too and hence have a more competitive market and clearer bookkeeping, as in, the departments making money are less likely to sponsor the departments loosi
Re: (Score:2)
companies that size should preferably split, and for sure not be allowed to buy any competitor in the market without permission.
That's already the case. The problem is in agreeing about the criteria for granting permission.
Re:But how? - XMPP (Score:2)
Facebook East and Facebook West and I can't talk to family members who live across the Great Divide once they split FB in two ...
With XMPP [wikipedia.org] this would not be a problem.
Oh - I forgot ... Google, Facebook, etc. deprecated xmpp for their own walled gardens. These big & small tech companies don't want you to leave their walled gardens.
People are so inert, so hopelessly dependent on the system that they will fight to protect it.
So nothing will change ... No matter what the government or anybody else is gonna do.
https://www.disruptivetelephon... [disruptivetelephony.com]
Re: By not having great US-based competitors (Score:2)
Freedom sells; totalitarianism doesn't. No one wants Chinese internet brands.
Re: (Score:1)
Yep. Break up (Facebook, Google, Amazon, Boeing, General Dynamics, whatever) and the Chinese or Indians or the Russians or whoever will pick up the pieces and beat us to death with them.
Big AMERICAN companies are a good thing. Everything is a struggle for world dominance and the losers end up living in unairconditioned, un-running-water corrugated steel shacks on streets piled with garbage and wondering if they are going to find a tasty treat in the rich neighborhood's dumpsters today.
Human nature or power dicta ? (Score:1)
Freedom ? give me a break ! there is no such think.
Arrogance (Score:2)
I'm disappointed in myself and the early Facebook team for not thinking more about how the News Feed algorithm could change our culture, influence elections and empower nationalist leaders,
This is no doubt the most arrogant thing I'll read all day today. Perhaps the most arrogant thing I'll read all week... or this month...
Cable News? (Score:1)
It's your own fuckin' fault! (Score:3)
When will people get their heads out of their asses and start taking responsibility for their own actions.
As in - stop giving your data to these companies voluntarily. Then this problem would go away all by itself. No government intervention required.