Posted on 07/25/2019 4:52:34 PM PDT by yesthatjallen
Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes reportedly met with the Department of Justice, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and multiple state attorneys general in recent weeks to discuss breaking up Facebook.
Hughes and two prominent antitrust academics, Scott Hemphill and Tim Wu, met with federal and state officials and have laid out a possible antitrust case against the social media giant, The New York Times reported Thursday.
The group argues that Facebook has made “serial defensive acquisitions” to maintain its control over the market and allow the company to hike up advertising prices while also lowering the quality of the user experience, according to The Times.
It is unclear the extent of Hughes’s role in the meetings with regulators, but The Times notes that he could help investigators connect with current and former Facebook employees and competitors. A partly redacted copy of the slides showed the names of people to interview blacked out, the newspaper reports.
The news comes after Department of Justice announced Tuesday that it had launched an investigation into whether the country’s largest tech companies have stifled competition or harmed consumers in its broadest inquiry into potential tech antitrust violations yet. Facebook, Google and Amazon could all be implicated in the probe.
Facebook separately announced Wednesday that the Federal Trade Commission had opened an antitrust investigation into the company on the heels of a record $5 billion privacy fine from the agency over its handling of the Cambridge Analytica scandal.
And on Thursday, Attorney General William Barr met with a group of eight state attorneys general to discuss antitrust concerns about tech giants.
Since leaving Facebook more than 10 years ago, Hughes has previously called for the social media giant to be broken up, calling Zuckerberg’s power “unprecedented and un-American” in a May op-ed, pointing to his “staggering” influence at the company that controls Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp.
Hughes wrote that Facebook should be separated into multiple companies and urged the FTC and Justice Department to enforce antitrust laws by undoing the platform’s 2012 acquisition of Instagram and WhatsApp.
I would prefer they go after Google rather than Facebook right now. We have clear cut evidence of Google employees saying they are going to interfere in the election to prevent Donald Trump from winning a second term.
Having an insider working with DOJ identifies how decisions are made and who made them.
Zuck is in deep trouble!
Social media and tech giants need to be crushed before they crush the nation.
Absolutely but I think right now they should be focusing all their energies on Google. We have around 16 months left till the election and this company Google bragging about interfering in the election. What the hell? Where are the investigations? Where are the arrests if evidence surfaces they interfered in 2016? So we are just going to let it happen again? What if they succeed this time and we get Kamala Harris as POTUS?? This is an extreme danger to the country....
Look at this, Google insider exposing them...
https://twitter.com/Project_Veritas/status/1154010284543094784
Click The Pic
Tell the FBI all the incendiary things Mark Zuckerberg bragged about when he was a 19 year old college student trying to build Facebook into a profitable company?
In what way is Facebook a dangerous monopoly?
It's not.
Any Conservative, any deeply religious person, could build their own imitation Facebook with software tools that are widely available on the Web.
Don't prosecute. Don't sue. Don't bitch.
Just go out into the real world and compete against him.
Breaking up Fakebook breaks my heart.
Good grief. Facebook is totally opt-in
The focus should be on Comcast which owns both infrastructure and the news media
Is Hughes the one Zuck screwed out of millions if not billions?
Wanna kill it? Quit using the damned thing.
They are going after them all - Apple, Google, Facebook at least. I am personally not sure how you break up Twitter but it should be regulated in a way to ensure equal protection for all its users (and you can do this by filing tens of thousands of fraud and contractual/business interference lawsuits against them over their practices of banning, shadow banning, censoring etc.
Apple, they need to lose the ability to limit apps on their store, and to allow other stores to sell and load apps that are native to their devices.
Google needs to be broken up, search into one company, advertising another, video possibly a third, and their other endeavors a 4th (and/or 5th and 6th).
Facebook, not sure if it should be broken up but at least regulated to prevent manipulation of content.
Amazon should be broken into 8 companies. 6 regional entities that would then each be allowed to compete against each other, 1 company for international business, and 1 company for tech services.
ATT should be broken into 3 companies - one that owns and maintains the infrastructure and leases access to 3rd party providers of internet and cable, one company that sells cable/internet, and one company that produces content and pays the same rate as other content producers for their cable slots.
Awesome! Totally agree, I just hope something happens before the election though. What I noticed that in 2016 all that year in 2016 before the election, Twitter, Youtube (Google owns Youtube) and Facebook were censoring me and outright banning me a lot more than usual which to me was clear cut evidence they were trying to influence the election because everything I was posting was pro Trump and anti Hillary. Now I never get banned or suspended. Even this anti-Hillary Twitter I created is still online.....
https://www.twitter.com/Hillary4Priso12
And I post all kinds of nasty posts on it calling leftists every name in the book just to see how far I can push it.
Now just wait: As we get closer to 2020, I absolutely guarantee you 100% they will close down that account especially if I start making the dem candidates look bad.
— GOOGLE SEARCH —
Search Google for “shoe”
GOOGLE:> tennis shoe [enter]
RESULTS: (8 of 8)
Vote Democrat
Vote Democrat now
Vote Democrat Vote often
Vote Democrat 2020
Vote Democrat harvesting
Vote Democrat we love everyone
Vote Democrat 2024
Vote Democrat The only choice
I just did as you said and got a million ads for shoes.
We do not need anti-trust enforcement. Facebook is regulated by the CDA/230; it is legally obligated to operate as a non-publishing “open platform” in exchange for Federal protection from content liability.
That is the law. Our apparatchiks do not enforce it, but it is the law. Facebook and these other publicly-traded corporations (not private companies) are being allowed to have their cake and eat it too: both protection and publishing.
That is the truth, that is a fact. If you do not like it, then advocate for repeal of CDA, but the one-sided pseudo-free-market mantra is disingenuous propaganda.
And I dare you to tell the SEC that any of these giants is a PRIVATE company that operates in a regulation-free market. Operating in the private sector does NOT equal being a private company. (IPO = Initial PUBLIC Offering.)
If they are categorized as a publisher, I agree.
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