Elizabeth Warren's Plan to Smash Facebook Could Work--and Boy, Do We Need It To

[backtoblue]

https://www.thedailybeast.com/elizabeth-warrens-plan-to-smash-facebook-could-workand-boy-do-we-need-it-to

Elizabeth Warren’s Plan to Smash Facebook Could Work—and Boy, Do We Need It To

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By the time I left Facebook in 2012, I had been an intern, an “extern,” a Public Policy Communications associate and a communications contractor. During my tenure, Facebook was still an emerging force on Capitol Hill. We spent much of our time persuading members of Congress to set up accounts and (then-new) Facebook Pages. Early familiarity, the idea went, would help Facebook avoid the regulatory hostility Microsoft faced in the 1990s.

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Under CEO Mark Zuckerberg and COO Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook pursued a strategy of creating or joining “self-regulatory” industry groups—which Facebook then dominated due to its rapid growth and huge ad revenues.

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Senator Elizabeth Warren has proposed an ambitious plan to break up Facebook and other tech giants including Amazon and Google. Her ideas include spinning off major acquisitions like Instagram and WhatsApp from Facebook and liberating some of the 79 companies Facebook has acquired in what Hughes calls a pattern of illegal “serial defensive acquisitions” meant to protect Zuckerberg’s behemoth from outside competition.

Even if Warren wins the presidency in 2020, any Silicon Valley antitrust campaign will likely be dead on arrival if Republicans hold control of the Senate. But that shouldn’t mean that regulating Facebook is a fool’s errand.


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Alot more at link. Its a pretty long and interesting read.

[beachbumbob]

1. its not happening TODAY and that is the problem

[backtoblue]

2. Its a fairly long article

The writer mentions that even some GOP may well be on board with this.

[backtoblue]

3. Excerpt ( i think there may be a paywall, so sorry in advance)

Silicon Valley wants Congress to believe its web of interconnected self-regulatory organizations is no different from how the American Bar Association polices lawyers. But the global scope of tech’s activities, and its ability to cause harm to tens or even hundreds of million of users with a single oversight, is a risk potential unlike any private industry has ever known. This year the United Kingdom declared Big Tech’s self-regulatory schemes a costly and dangerous mistake. The United States must follow suit.

Facebook’s excesses cry out for muscular federal regulation, and Warren may find surprising Republican support for a plan that polices Silicon Valley while stopping short of a full breakup. In Facebook’s case, stepping back from antitrust arguments in favor of modernizing and strengthening regulation of digital advertising and data protection may be the surest way to secure tangible legislative victories in defense of our democracy and fair market competition.

Outside of an anti-trust framework, Republicans have been willing, even eager, to criticize Facebook’s unprecedented control over news and content. Former Senator Jon Kyl voiced Republican concerns about the “increasing scale and complexity of Facebook’s content moderation practices” in a recent Wall Street Journal op-ed. In September, four Republican senators sent a letter to Zuckerberg bemoaning the opaque manner in which Facebook regulates “appropriate” content.

Democrats may laugh at Republicans’ focus on Facebook’s “censorship” of conservative content, but such criticism represents a rare crack in traditional GOP support for the autonomy of massive corporations.

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