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Top Communications Union Joins Group Pushing for Facebook's Breakup (bloomberg.com)
The top U.S. communications union is joining a coalition calling for the Federal Trade Commission to break up Facebook, as the social media company faces growing government scrutiny and public pressure. From a report: "We should all be deeply concerned by Facebook's power over our lives and democracy," said Brian Thorn, a researcher for the 700,000-member Communications Workers of America, the newest member of the Freedom From Facebook coalition. For the FTC not to end Facebook's monopoly and impose stronger rules on privacy "would be unfair to the American people, our privacy, and our democracy," Thorn said in an email.
Facebook disclosed July 2 that it's cooperating with probes by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and the Federal Bureau of Investigation on how political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica obtained personal information from as many as 87 million of the siteâ(TM)s users without their consent. The FTC, the Department of Justice and some state regulators were already probing the matter, which prompted Facebook Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg to testify before Congress in April. Facebook also faces calls for regulation from many lawmakers and the public over the privacy issue, Russian efforts to manipulate the 2016 presidential election and the spread of false information on the platform.
Facebook disclosed July 2 that it's cooperating with probes by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and the Federal Bureau of Investigation on how political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica obtained personal information from as many as 87 million of the siteâ(TM)s users without their consent. The FTC, the Department of Justice and some state regulators were already probing the matter, which prompted Facebook Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg to testify before Congress in April. Facebook also faces calls for regulation from many lawmakers and the public over the privacy issue, Russian efforts to manipulate the 2016 presidential election and the spread of false information on the platform.
If you don't like it, you can always go to MySpace or GeoCities.
Check your premises.
What are you supposed to break up and how will it help anything? Instagram and FB as two entities will probably just be even more effective at invading privacy. Working for a company that was a former Bell company... it really doesn't matter. We have a big huge weird metal desk in our courtyard that's AT&T's and a number of executives were from oldschool AT&T. Breaking a company up really just ends up making the executives more money and makes it harder to account for shenanigans.
Facebook is useful and popular precisely because everyone in the world with any interest in social media is on it (well, except for places that restrict free access to the Internet, like China). You can't "break it up" into 20 different social-media sites, because then it won't be useful any more.
Sure, you could force them to spin off Instagram or whatever as a separate corporate entity, but as brucekeller observes-- what difference would that make? You'd still be left with a core platform that has billions of users. That makes the core platform bigger than any news outlet in the history of the world, and means that it will always have enormous power to influence political opinion.
With that said: I'd love to migrate from Facebook to a different social media site, one which still retains the basic functionality of Facebook. I'd be OK with doing this even knowing that most of my friends would *not* be on the new site, at least initially. But I tried looking for Facebook alternatives a few months ago, and the results were... not encouraging. Maybe someone here can post a suggestion.
Instead of focusing on a single company, why not target the crux of the problem instead ?
Get some serious privacy laws enacted so that NO company is allowed to obtain or collect private information from individuals without their express knowledge and consent. ( No, burying it on page 212 of a EULA doesn't qualify, nor does tying the right to spy on us for a discounted price for a service ) Obtaining it without consent is basically theft and should be treated as such.
Companies get a fucking slap on the wrist for surreptitiously obtaining data on us and / or losing it in a breach. Why is it I can get hit with a $150K fine for downloading a music track ( per infringement ) but companies stealing OUR personal data is perfectly legal ? Imagine if companies had to pay a $150K fine for every customers data they obtained without consent. ( Or on a per customer / account basis during a data breach ) That would be one impressive fine if you have several million customers data in your possession. . .
Additionally, some harsh laws ( at least on par with HIPAA laws ) need to be enacted to protect said information and force companies to take this matter seriously.
The only way you fix this is if you hurt them financially.