Professor Who Coined Term 'Net Neutrality' Thinks It's Time To Break Up Facebook (theverge.com)

pgmrdlm shares a report from The Verge: Best known for coining the phrase "net neutrality" and his book The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires, Wu has a new book coming out in November called The Curse of Bigness: Antitrust in the New Gilded Age. In it, he argues compellingly for a return to aggressive antitrust enforcement in the style of Teddy Roosevelt, saying that Google, Facebook, Amazon, and other huge tech companies are a threat to democracy as they get bigger and bigger. "We live in America, which has a strong and proud tradition of breaking up companies that are too big for inefficient reasons," Wu told me on this week's Vergecast. "We need to reverse this idea that it's not an American tradition. We've broken up dozens of companies."

"I think if you took a hard look at the acquisition of WhatsApp and Instagram, the argument that the effects of those acquisitions have been anticompetitive would be easy to prove for a number of reasons," says Wu. And breaking up the company wouldn't be hard, he says. "What would be the harm? You'll have three competitors. It's not 'Oh my god, if you get rid of WhatsApp and Instagram, well then the whole world's going to fall apart.' It would be like 'Okay, now you have some companies actually trying to offer you an alternative to Facebook.'" Breaking up Facebook (and other huge tech companies like Google and Amazon) could be simple under the current law, suggests Wu. But it could also lead to a major rethinking of how antitrust law should work in a world where the giant platform companies give their products away for free, and the ability for the government to restrict corporate power seems to be diminishing by the day. And it demands that we all think seriously about the conditions that create innovation. "I think everyone's steering way away from the monopolies, and I think it's hurting innovation in the tech sector," says Wu.

Comments

Safe Harbor

[Kunedog]

There's a simpler way:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

If they want to curate content according to their political bias, then treat them like the politically-biased media outlets they are, legally liable for the content they host, instead of platforms under "safe harbor" protections. If they want to continue to be treated like platforms, then they can keep their hands off their political opponents' speech.

Re:Safe Harbor

[pots]

I didn't read the article, but the summary has nothing to do with what you're talking about. The issue at hand is monopolies and the consequent stifling of innovation and lack of competitive pressure, that being the only thing which makes our economy work for people instead of against them.

And how would that solve anything for consumers?

[Anonymous Coward]

Facebook has grown because it offered the best social platform for users. The point of social platforms is to connect with everyone else. Fragmentation means people needing to belong to and check multiple platforms. Trying to force competition won't solve any user issues. However, once Facebook stops providing a compelling service, people will move on their own. The same as they gave up MySpace and the same as they rejected Google+. The market chose Facebook and will purge it when time comes.

The same with Google. There were plenty of entrenched search services when Google came to be. Users chose it because it was better. The old search services died because they didn't evolve. If Google stops being the best fit option, people will go somewhere else. They already have choices like Bing and Duck Duck Go. As the service is free, people are choosing based on functionality, not on price. Those that don't like the privacy price of Google are opting for other services. You can't just declare another search service is required and then force the public to use it so that you can claim to have multiple services with comparable market share.

If people were given a choice of all you can eat steak or beets at equal cost, odds are that the majority would choose steak. When you remove cost and scarcity, the premium option will dominate. Digital services don't have scarcity like physical products do. It's a different economy.

Re:And how would that solve anything for consumers

[pots]

Facebook has grown because it offered the best social platform for users.

As stated in the summary: Facebook has grown by purchasing their competitors. The summary mentions WhatsApp and Instagram specifically.

Your comment about the problem with fragmentation is an example of why Facebook needs to be broken up by an outside entity: they have a natural monopoly, since real competition from startups would lead to fragmentation.

I've said this before, but if the government came along and broke up the company by splitting off Facebook's front-end from its back-end, then we could have competition on the front-end without fragmentation of the userbase. This scenario can only happen through regulation though.

Re:People WANT monopolies

[LostMyBeaver]

I honestly want the monopolies to pretend to strengthen democracy.

At this point in time,
Jeff Bezos owns Amazon and news papers and whatever else
Satya Nadella is in control of one of the biggest new networks (which slashdotters will never see because it's through Edge and Bing)
The Alphabet boys are in control of what almost everyone in the world sees
Zuck and Dorsey could easily control a MASSIVE amount of what everyone sees.

What's also important is that most of these people seem to have some inkling of wanting to be good people. They're all stumbling their way through trying to be nice and fair and more powerful than the leaders of the UN nations.

Imagine if Facebook were broken into 20 different news and social media sites that were all controlled by basically the same people? It would be bigger, not smaller than it is today.

So... why can't these megabillionairs launch democracy sites which would break the two party system and allow equal access to all potential candidates. I mean seriously, politics is about gaining votes... which is about visibility. Zuck, Dorsey, Alphabet Boys and Nadella could easily outdo all the other mass media outlets in the world and offer a real political platform where "He who has the billion dollar fund raising power wins" isn't how it will work. They could make it a platform which works somewhat like a game or a reality TV series where interested candidates can compete on the merits of their beliefs over time and build up viewership.

These companies could capitalize by making their own kind of Apprentice style TV series that would allow the people to judge how different candidates lead and make decisions. But instead of making it about "You're fired" which still seems to be a mantra for Trump, make shows that simulate real political situations. Have episodes where they are confronted with issues like trying to mediate between Democrats and Republicans who disagree with each other just because they're both stupid. Or other episodes where as president they are presented with a bill to sign or veto which makes no sense, is nothing but 1000 pages of ear marks with a stupid name that exists only because congress can't discuss anything anymore. I for example would veto it and say "Don't send it back until you've actually read the thing and made the contents reflect what the title says... and actually discuss it... none of this passing the shit around until we get all our earmarks in bullshit. If you do that and the bill still sounds good, and you still have the votes, I'll sign it... otherwise, don't waste my time."

Imagine if it were possible for political science majors in school to learn more about administering the government rather than learning to establish, collect, distribute and manipulate political capital?

These mega-corporations are well positioned to make this happen in the real world. There's nothing wrong with Facebook interfering with what people seem to call the democratic system so long as they actually do it fairly and in the right way.

That being said... we need the mega-monopolies... consider Amazon grocery delivery. Instead of having 10,000 stores spread out over the whole country selling the same shit, there could be 50-100 well managed and automated warehouses. That means a lot of really important things.

1) Waste management... any idea how much meat we produce for no other reason than to stock shelves and make it look more attractive to buy and to provide selection? What about milk? What about vegetables? Do you really think there's a world food shortage? Is there a real resource consumption problem? Consumption means that we... well consume it. We don't. The massive amount of meat, fish, dairy etc... we produce and then simply throw away... in its packaging ... is horrifying. If Amazon for example were to centralize and when meat was ordered, then it would be defrosted and processed based on demand... it would make such a massive difference in our overhead to the planet.

Re:And how would that solve anything for consumers

[turbidostato]

"Fragmentation means people needing to belong to and check multiple platforms"

No, it doesn't. How many email services do you connect to? There are thousands of them and still you don't have any problem to get and send emails from/to anyother. How can this be?

Hint: the fact that things are a given way doesn't mean it must be the only possible one.