Tim Wu Explains Why He Thinks Facebook Should Be Broken Up (2019)

Interesting point. Facebook has 2.8B active monthly users. How many does the next highest one have? TikTok has 680M which is not even a quarter of that.

It is even harder to argue this when Facebook's customers are advertisers, not users (which are a resource). Facebook does not have a monopoly on advertising. But this is the best avenue to show it does consumer harm, which is the legal critera for a monopoly. Here, "consumer" would be advertiser. How Facebook treats advertisers is going to determine the legality of any monopoly claim, regardless of whether people intuitively believe Facebook is "too big". To make that be a criteria for breakup, one would need to change the law, not issue any directives from administrators.

Not many care about monopolies. We care and want fair competition. Each of the companies mentioned in your comment don't matter except where they are anticompetitive (FB is based on what Mark says alone and Amazon appears to be based on their Amazon basics and similar patterns, as I recall Apple has right to repair related issues tangent to this and Google and Apple colluded on fixing salaries, not sure about the details here...). None of this has to do with monopolies.

After the last election cycle in the US I’d be interested to know which platform was used to spread the most misinformation. That was very damaging.

Facebook is the most anti-competitive of them all IMO. "Monopolist" and "anti-competitive" are overlapping yet distinct legal concepts in antitrust law. Facebook had a well known "buy or bury" strategy where they would either buy their competitors or try to destroy them. What is interesting is that IMO FB has had antitrust pressure before google/apple/amazon and this basically froze FB's M&A teams for the past ~4 years. In this time we have seen 4 new promising independent social media networks arise (tiktok, dispo, clubhouse, substack). IMO without the antitrust pressure against FB the current state of social media would be more consolidated, less likely that these 4 new networks would be independent/growing quickly at this stage.

except for the whole destroying political discourse in our country accelerating polarization spreading disinformation and acting as a tool of radicalization. not to mention leading to increased rates of depression in it users.

Interesting take.

From where I sit Facebook appears the most brazen about their anti-competitive practices especially when compared to Google. Their tightly held walled guarden, forcing oculus to use facebook accounts, etc. Android allows 3rd party market places, Google's products in general have low switching cost (from gmail, calendar, etc to 3rd party stuff). Their ad network is pretty pervasive there and hard to escape just because of the size and Google's push for AMP on the web when so many were against it does seem like flexing their monopolistic strength.

  Facebook seems like the least of the big techs 
  that are the most abusive of monopoly

Framing the issue as a competition between asshole companies lets them all off the hook.

FB blatantly abuses its monopoly by trying to buy smaller competitors, and if that fails, cloning their products.

Facebook is the CIA factbook for the peoples of the world lent out to the business community.

Even better is “The Attention Merchants.” Pair that with Zuboff’s “The Age of Surveillance Capitalism” and you’ll have a good foundation for how dangerous Facebook is. Something needs to be done. Monopoly is a means to an end here, but it might not get the job done. What need is a ban on behavioral advertising full stop.

It’s amusing to me considering the degree to which tech backed Biden.

That may be, but I think it's all for show. It's unlikely that anything will happen for years, and by that time there will probably be a different president. Look at the Microsoft anti-trust action, which started in the 90's but didn't really finish until the early 2000's. If the government tries to force something like a breakup, then I imagine any company will spend years in court going through appeals before anything will be resolved.

Most likely is that after a few years, any company targeted with anti-trust action will agree to some changes in the way they do business and maybe a fine. Then all will be forgotten. It's likely that the changes will be pro-consumer, but I think it's unlikely that any company will be broken up.

Strongly disagree that it's no differnet. Oil and telco doesn't have network effects. It doesn't matter if your friend fuels his car with Citgo or BP.

>Hopefully the people who work there begin to realize the damage they are doing to this country.

They might not realise it now but I suspect they would should they leave. I for one would feel very uncomfortable working with someone who's ex-Facebook and I don't think I'm alone in that regard. FWIW the damage Facebook's caused goes far beyond the United States.

Which country is this country?