It’s Time to Break Up Facebook

Since Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg purchased Instagram and WhatsApp, he wields unprecedented dominance in the social networking space. Billions of people around the world use the platforms regularly, and Facebook now pockets over 80% of the world’s social networking revenue. As Zuckerberg holds the majority vote on the Facebook board, he alone can determine the configuration of news feeds and privacy settings. He also has the final say over what content to remove from the sites, giving him de facto censorship authority over two billion users.

“Mark [Zuckerberg] is a good, kind person. But I’m angry that his focus on growth led him to sacrifice security and civility for clicks.”

Since the 1990s, US courts have become reluctant to enforce the 1890 Sherman Antitrust Act, which outlaws monopolies. US courts didn’t block Facebook’s acquisition of Instagram and WhatsApp, arguing that the company’s quasi-monopoly doesn’t harm consumers since they use the services for free. Yet the return Facebook gets from its users generates immense value that doesn’t always come with an exact price tag. Facebook’s news-feed feature, for example, excels at keeping users on the site longer and longer, generating huge amounts of user data that Facebook can use, among other things, to fine-tune advertising.

“Facebook isn’t afraid of a few more rules. It’s afraid of an antitrust case and of the kind of accountability that real government oversight would bring.”

Zuckerberg has recently tried to respond to increased public pushback by offering encrypted private messaging and calling for an independent oversight commission to police platform content. Yet Zuckerberg’s overtures won’t bring fundamental change. At best, they will help take the wind out of the sails of those calling for the company’s breakup. Only dismantling Facebook and establishing government oversight over social networking sites will prevent Facebook from becoming virtually untouchable by competitors in the foreseeable future. Long-established antitrust law empowers the US Federal Trade Commission and Justice Department to demand spinning off Instagram and WhatsApp and have Facebook executives sell their respective shares. While Facebook shares probably won’t suffer, such a move will encourage Facebook and other social networking entrepreneurs to innovate and compete. The consumer would then have a choice between several viable social networking alternatives that may offer different types of services or levels of privacy protection. Meanwhile, the US government will need to design and regularly update the rules related to hate speech to protect users of the various sites.