Facebook sued by FTC, 48 attorneys general alleging it operates an illegal monopoly

[Ban Hammer 13,334]

A group of 48 U.S. attorneys general led by New York filed an antitrust lawsuit against Facebook (FB) on Wednesday, alleging the social media giant is violating antitrust law by buying up competitors and depriving consumers of alternatives that would better protect their privacy. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) filed a separate suit alleging similar antitrust violations.

At the heart of both lawsuits are claims that Facebook’s acquisitions of Instagram in 2012 for $1 billion and WhatsApp in 2014 for $19 billion, as well as other smaller technology companies, were carried out in order to quash competition. As part of its lawsuit, the FTC wants to force Facebook to break off both Instagram and WhatsApp.

“After identifying two significant competitive threats to its dominant position — Instagram and WhatsApp — Facebook moved to squelch those threats by buying the companies, reflecting CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s view, expressed in a 2008 email, that ‘it is better to buy than compete,’” the FTC lawsuit stated.

Facebook is the largest social network in the world with 2.7 billion monthly active users across its four apps: Facebook, Messenger, Instagram, and WhatsApp.

 

more at https://finance.yahoo.com/news/facebook-antitrust-lawsuit-193839255.html

[TBoneTX 45,287]

This may prove to be very interesting.

[Dashinka 24,493]

Who is old enough to remember the AT&T break-up?

 

Personally, I doubt this will go anywhere as there are other choices out there one of which being do not use FB, IG or those types of social media, but who knows.

[Orangesapples 1,954]

4 hours ago, Dashinka said:

Who is old enough to remember the AT&T break-up?

 

Personally, I doubt this will go anywhere as there are other choices out there one of which being do not use FB, IG or those types of social media, but who knows.

The choice of not using social media doesn't count when it comes to deciding if something is a monopoly or not. 

 

Personally, I'm glad monopolies are being broken up and I hope they don't stop with social media and tech companies but also look into Amazon and other big practical monopolies. 

[Prizm123 1,086]

monopolies are stupid hard to prove in court

i agree that it should be done somehow, especially with how ubiquitous things like facebook are for pretty much anything.... shopping, socializing, organizing, advertising, promotions...

[Burnt Reynolds 5,058]

7 hours ago, Dashinka said:

Who is old enough to remember the AT&T break-up?

 

Personally, I doubt this will go anywhere as there are other choices out there one of which being do not use FB, IG or those types of social media, but who knows.

I not only remember Ma Bell breakup (more in hindsight as I was a teenager purchasing my first phones and figuring out who to pay for my phone service), but I also remember the same US and state governments allowing the broken up companies to merge back into monopolies (which helped prompt the NSA collaboration with them at their trunks to intercept and relay all their data to these massive spy datacenters) and not only thwart competition but strongarm states into preventing voters in cities from funding their own municipal broadband projects, who'd give up these projects as they couldn't afford to defend the endless lawsuits. Naturally, Google, another impending monopoly, stuck it out, defeated the anti-muni lawsuits, but only ensuring to defend the ones against them and not anti-muni agreements as a whole.

 

One of the few things Obama did right, which shows how careful one has to be about the extremes of private vs. public was support municipal broadband efforts. The reason that was important was taxpayers in cities were opting to fund very decent broadband created through locally funded taxes when the big providers would not only refuse to deliver passable service, but would partner with state governments to create monopoly-enforcing legislation (protecting the primary cable and/or DSL provider of that region from competition), and some forms of these laws were designed to wreck local jurisdictions financially (one called "minefield laws") that ever had any ambition of actually following what their constituents wanted.

Edited December 10, 2020 by Burnt Reynolds

[TBoneTX 45,287]

On 12/10/2020 at 6:55 AM, Dashinka said:

Who is old enough to remember the AT&T break-up?

You're dating yourself, and attempting to do so with others, you conspirator.

And if you're dating yourself, stop being narcissistic, si man.