Tough. There is more at stake than FB recovering its investment into IG.
Besides... they will get to sell it, probably at a profit. They got to own it for 8 years, enjoyed the benefits of lowered competition. They will be fine. I agree that this should have been prevented in the first place, but we are where we are.
Controversially, I don't think ordinary rule of law can apply to FAANG-scale monopolies. There's no way to generalize rules, laws or industrial policies when the industry is "social media." Social media is (economically) mostly FB. Any rule, law or policy is basically regulating FB specifically.
Anyway, the danger of a hammer coming out is low. Even if prosecutors succeed, a cost-of-business fine is the most likely result. Even if they do spin out whatsapp & IG... that leaves facebook mostly intact.
I'd also note that the worst case scenario for overzealous trustbusting is basically nothing. At worst you kill FB. This isn't steel production or auto manufacturing. FB could be swallowed by a demon tomorrow and by next thursday any shortage in social media will be filled. We're not exactly short on the stuff.
FB bring in $80bn pa, but that's totally arbitrary to the cost of doing social networking. It could be done for $40bn or $8bn and I doubt the consumer would notice a difference. Again, this isn't auto manufacturing. A car company can't make as many cars with half the revenue. If one dies, we actually have less manufacturing capacity and we'll make fewer cars for a while. None of this applies to social media.
Separating IG from FB does not put anyone out of work. Nothing gets shut down. FB are extremely profitable, and that almost certainly continues
In the last paragraph, I was trying illustrate a point. With monopolies of the past, the primary concern was that the services continue to operate somehow. EG, when Bell was broken up, the danger was that phone/telegram services would be harmed. Before that, the danger was that steel production would be disrupted and downstream industries harmed.
Facebook is a monopoly in a marketplace of extreme abundance. We have lots of social media, messaging, photo sharing, etc. There is zero danger of shortages or meaningful "consumer harm," regardless of what happens to FB.
Even if antitrust does harm FB, the only stakeholders at risk are FB employees and investors. There is no systemic risk, downstream risk, consumer risk. All the risk is contained within FB.
This doesn't mean FB should be killed. It does mean that the scale tips strongly towards antitrust. On one side, we have a lot of risk. On the other, very little.
People call for putting way more than 50,000+ people out of work all of the time (eliminating the oil and gas industry as an example). If the belief is those people are engaged in harmful activity, why wouldn't you want them to stop ASAP?
Besides... they will get to sell it, probably at a profit. They got to own it for 8 years, enjoyed the benefits of lowered competition. They will be fine. I agree that this should have been prevented in the first place, but we are where we are.
Controversially, I don't think ordinary rule of law can apply to FAANG-scale monopolies. There's no way to generalize rules, laws or industrial policies when the industry is "social media." Social media is (economically) mostly FB. Any rule, law or policy is basically regulating FB specifically.
Anyway, the danger of a hammer coming out is low. Even if prosecutors succeed, a cost-of-business fine is the most likely result. Even if they do spin out whatsapp & IG... that leaves facebook mostly intact.
I'd also note that the worst case scenario for overzealous trustbusting is basically nothing. At worst you kill FB. This isn't steel production or auto manufacturing. FB could be swallowed by a demon tomorrow and by next thursday any shortage in social media will be filled. We're not exactly short on the stuff.
FB bring in $80bn pa, but that's totally arbitrary to the cost of doing social networking. It could be done for $40bn or $8bn and I doubt the consumer would notice a difference. Again, this isn't auto manufacturing. A car company can't make as many cars with half the revenue. If one dies, we actually have less manufacturing capacity and we'll make fewer cars for a while. None of this applies to social media.