> ... Facebook has maintained its monopoly position by buying up companies that present competitive threats and by imposing restrictive policies that unjustifiably hinder actual or potential rivals that Facebook does not or cannot acquire
Imagine if FB was broken up like old school monopolies. That would definitely open field to a lot of smaller social media startups. I am worried about consumer privacy impacts because it is easier to regulate one giant company than a myriad of smaller ones. Regardless, I say let's do it because monopolies and data stewardship are two separate problems and historically monopoly breakdowns did great things for innovation.
I actually disagree. Regulating a single giant company becomes an exercise in compliance, which American governments are absolutely terrible at. The single giant company has the resources to fight any action that could existentially threaten it. This winds up in its' own set of abuses.
In a robust market of smaller players the regulatory agencies can stick to rulemaking, investigation, and enforcement (civil fines/prosecutions), which is what they are great at. Smaller players don't have the resources to compete with the government and force them into regulatory trench warfare.
This is similar to the situation with the IRS — they spend most of their time auditing EITC cases, and other issues related to poor and middle class people. They don't have the resources to collect on the billionaires who have enough power to fight the government to attrition.
> ... easier to regulate one giant company than a myriad of smaller ones
This sounds... incorrect.
Small players are much more vulnerable to fines and other penalties which range from 'cost of doing business' to 'slap on the wrist' for the big guys. And small ones don't seem to have much in the way of lobbying power or other direct influence over regulators.
Maybe more accurate to say that it's a bit harder to police lots of small players, but also that it's only the small players who produce good behaviour under regulation.
I could get behind this if the current ones actually followed regulation. FB are so entrenched that they don't have to follow the rules as they've demonstrated with Cambridge Analytica among a myriad of other issues with their platform.
Imagine if FB was broken up like old school monopolies. That would definitely open field to a lot of smaller social media startups. I am worried about consumer privacy impacts because it is easier to regulate one giant company than a myriad of smaller ones. Regardless, I say let's do it because monopolies and data stewardship are two separate problems and historically monopoly breakdowns did great things for innovation.