The legal theory may match the law, but Facebook will be able to wriggle out of that theory, because there is so much innovation and competition in tech. They need a different legal theory to apply to FB - something akin to coercion or fraud of the public and other companies, due to Facebook's machinations to dominate all forms of content through control of advertising dollars. This is what has created the monster that is FB. And FB must be required to monitor all who post to the "Newsfeed", and label the material as fact, opinion, family news, commercial advertising, political ad. Contributors must disclose their sources of information ( who wrote the "study")and financial involvement (who paid for the "study") to the public on their facebook pages. (Non-profit corporation, corporation, personal funds, association of plumbers, lovers of art in Pueblo, N.M.) So both legal means and regulatory means must be used, and soon, or Russia will continue to be successful in damaging the U.S. and other democracies around the world, in 2020 and beyond. Look at poor Britain!
2
Facebook is such a bore not to mention a complete waste of time. For the life of me I can't understand why anyone uses it.
Go outside, take a walk, read a book, watch TV, write a letter.
Do anything except mindlessly and endlessly scrolling through FB, posting your (yawn) photos and filling in all your "friends" on every mundane thing you're doing or with every inane thought that pops into your head.
5
Can it be done? Will it be done?
From where I am standing, doing something like this seams like a fairytale.
if FB is out for a week, their guests can not share cat photos with high school friends.
if Experian is out for a week, I can not get a loan, a job, ...
what a waste of time and energy, when he could be impacting our world, in a more positive manner.
it appears Mr. Hughes has a self-interest here.
1
Yes time to break this monster up! I see from comments, that there may be some people who are not concerned about privacy. at all. But:
"Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely" - Lord Acton
Too much power in the hands of unprincipled (FB ) will only cause harm to everyone in the end.
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Taxpayers money do not need to be used to enrich judges and attorneys due to needless antitrust litigation.
Simple laws forcing Facebook or Google or Yahoo, and ISP's also, to get explicit permission from consumers to take personal info. If grated permission, then the consumers receive residual payments for data sharing.
Breaking up these companies is a mere warning to them to scatter and hide.
2
@Bill -- How do judges enrich themselves in antitrust litigation?
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@Stephen Beard
Hi...by controlling the tempo of proceedings. Analogous to a conductor marking time directing a concert.
Antitrust litigation isn't needed. Judges can focus on more pressing matters, than allowing time to Mr Zuckerberg and his gang to scatter and hide.
Simple laws, requiring easily understood questions from these companies, to consumers about data sharing permission. Profit sharing with consumers, if they elect to opt in
3
To the commenters condemning Mr. Hughes as being hypocritical and "cashing out", you are misinformed.
As he said in the presentation, in earlier years fb succeeded by "outdoing its competitors", in 2010 they added the strategy of buying emerging rivals. Mr. Hughes left fb in 2007, before the monopolistic strategy was formulated.
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@nom de guerre
Correct. He also sold his Facebook stock.
2
Now that he’s made a billion dollars and cashed out, time to break it up! Very noble.
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@R
Or he could live out his life in peace, not caring about fb's monopolistic practices.
8
In many ways, Amazon has been doing the same thing for years. Its acquisitions have destroyed far more competition in the marketplace and have more dramatic implications for the economy. Time for more oversight and regulation there as well.
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I guess he’s all set making money from Facebook so is ok destroying it for other investors.
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@Jane
Incorrect. He left the company before they started buying up competitors.
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@nom de guerre Left, but no doubt had stock. Net worth is listed at 400 mil. Maybe not a billionaire, but he did ok by Facebook stock he was given.
1
The only problem is the wording of the opening sentences.Facebook was not built from scratch ,the concept was taken by a court trail between the now owner and the original developers who the now owner was once working for. A true film was made of the ordeal .The genetic make up of facebook was procured ,one might say, from inception ,it was corrupted and the origin of ownership transfered from the original developers to one who worked for them.So the progression continues in perpetuity all encompassing and on a governmental level ,completely out of control.A 100% democrat troll ,Facebook was easily transcended and continues to be by extraneous political forces leading to all bets are up social implications from the spectrum of the extreme.How serious ,is the question,serious is the answer.
3
Very well said Mr. Eintoss. Can you please elaborate on your ending? Thank you.
This is insufferable! Many people knew in real time that what you were doing was out of control monstrous and not even remotely desirable. But we need you to stop the Frankenstein monster you’ve unleashed. No, no, no. The reason we have Trump and a public that detests expertabia because Silicon Valley moved fast and broke the whole system. Just take your billions and go away. Really. You’ve done enough Chris. Dustin. Mark. Sheryl. You’ve all done quite enough.
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@RS
This is why we need government oversight to get ahead of emerging technologies.
Chris Hughes left fb in 2007, before fb started buying competitors, so he shouldn't be lumped in with the rest.
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FB is rubbish and needs to go
10
The issue with Facebook is not that it is too big but rather supervoting shares that give Zuckerberg absolute control. Without oversight from shareholders, things can go off the rails and there is no accountability. No one at FB dares raise any issues because they know that even if they got the board to listen, nothing would happen to Zuckerberg. This is a problem at a lot of companies that have supervoting shares. Public companies should have one class of stock.
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@Matt J. If people don't like supervoting, then sell your shares and buy another company with more voting power. I'm sure the HP, Blackberry, or Yahoo's of the world would love for people to buy shares in their company.
It's also a case of seeing what happens to companies when you have a whole bunch of people voting out CEO's every couple of years with no real vision.
3
@Eric How do you think that FB developed the corrupt culture that it has? It is a monoculture that valued growth at all costs and didn't care about privacy. FB just paid a $5 billion fine for its violations which works out to about $5 per violation. The FTC has the right to fine up to the $42,530 per privacy violation. Now had the FTC wanted, they could have fined the company into oblivion. If the political winds shift, they could find themselves being broken up as well. Facebook has somehow managed the impossible, they have made enemies of both the GOP and the Dems. A company with better checks and balances would be better prepared for the long run.
4
Out of this I'd like to see control passing to the actual people who use Facebook.
They should get facilities that let them take charge, inter alia:
👏🏻 Ability to use our friends content (it's not Facebook's) as we and they want.
👏🏻 Opt in on adverts.
👏🏻 Opt in on censorship.
👏🏻 No obstacles to individuals specifying how their content, is used, stored etc. without interference from others.
👏🏻 Pay your own way, but only for the features you use.
👏🏻 No obstacles to remixing your content and that of others, who allow, as you all please.
👏🏻 Opt in to surveillance.
Passing control to corporations, bureaucrats etc. is not desirable for many. They've seen what that does before.
How much of those fines go to users? Nuff said.
7
Hughes, in an apparent need to recover from his husband's congressional election loss, pretty much destroyed The New Republic magazine.
Is this another attempt at redemption?
12
He was effectively fired from Facebook and cheated out of future profits so it makes sense that he is now getting revenge.
11
Such cute boys in 2005. And now? Ugh. What has Facebook wrought? Not single-handedly by any means, but the capacity to scale anything they want to do is mindboggling.
4
Get back to me when he gives up his $500M Facebook fortune.
15
Now that regular investors have started to make $ off of FB, Hughes wants to regulate....hope he donates all his profits to a worthy cause....this is the worst kind of capitalism
14
facebook is a totally useless waste of time, unless you need to hook up with someone you knew when you were 8.
10
Facebook doesn't need to be broken up.
It just needs to be operated fairly and unbiased.
Censoring certain beliefs and ideas from Facebook, or Twitter or..
Is the same as telling Black people they can't eat in your restaurant, or have to sit at the back of the bus.
And search engines that control their search algorithm to censor ideas are the same.
It is unfair and illegal discrimination.
5
At his next rally when Trump starts talking about Facebook the crowd should chant "break it up... break it up".
6
Tim Wu has long championed the idea of a "curse of bigness", a phrase coined by the lawyer Louis Brandeis a century ago who railed against big companies. Trouble is, even Louis Brandeis had to retreat from the extreme positions he once took.
Brandeis, for instance, thought that all people should be independent contractors rather than employees of companies. And he thought that all big companies should be broken up, without exception. To be big was bad. Period.
Even back in the early 1900s that was quixotic, sounding good in the abstract but hard to put into practice. As time went on, the idea was abandoned except for people like E.F. Schumacher, who in book "Small Is Beautiful" insisted that everything -- companies included -- needed to be kept at human scale.
If you operate under that theory, big companies should be broken up. Why? Only by making all companies small is the curse of bigness is lifted.
But the problems with Facebook are not just because it is big. It's not even that big. And forcing it to give up its acquisitions and get smaller will not solve the problems that Facebook causes.
No, the problems with Facebook do not come from the curse of bigness. We have to be smarter than thinking in terms of curses in dealing with it.
Breaking up is hard to do, especially when dealing with big companies. It's a political Potemkin solution that seems to deal with the problem but in reality is facile and ineffective.
9
Serial defensive acquisitions is not the core issue with FaceBook.. so this entire inquiry is misplaced.
Companies buy up smaller competitors all the time in the corporate world, and must have approval of federal regulators i the process.
The core issue with FaceBook is it's reckless disregard in how it gathers and misuses users data, and the data of anyone who has any digital contact with said users.
So.. as usual.. the feds are chasing the chickens in the hen house and completely ignoring the predator fox sitting right in front of them.
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@Chuck
I think most people realize the anti-democratic nature of Facebook with regard to data, but there is very little case law. Publicly portraying them as monopolistic bullies, on the other hand, will do much to sway the opinion of the electorate- and by proxy- other public servants.
10
If you don't like facebook, don't use it. Remember that a platform is only powerful if the people use it. Facebook was and is still very popular to the users, and in a capitalist society, the market is always right, no matter what the law or bitter ex-employees want.
I personally think this is really sad to see one of it's original founders essentially stab Zuckerberg in the back. So much for friendship when money is involved huh? Sad sad sad.
Also, how is Facebook squashing competition, by buying them out??? I would love to be 'squashed' by a hundreds of millions of dollars payout any day. If a competitor wants to compete with facebook, they can choose to say no to a buyout offer... they are not being forced to sell their company.
7
@Jason
The problem is.. if you have friends who use FaceBook, that in turn can expose data about you as well as FB vacuums up not just member data.. but anyone else that said member actually interacts digitally with.
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@Chuck
I do agree with you there. That is an issue about privacy and data usage, and I wholeheartedly agree that we need to be careful about keeping our rights respected, but this lawsuit is about anti-trust (anti competition) which is a separate issue.
6
@Jason ..."in a capitalist society, the market is always right, no matter what the law...want." Really???!! Please give this comment some serious thought, thanks.
10
The FaceBook brand is beginning to implode.
Nothing material will change until Zuckerberg is removed from all responsibility of operations and development. Period.
Problem is.. this control freak and professional con artist has controlling vote shares and it will take more then the board and shareholders to unseat him.
But this is worst then just FaceBook for Silicon Valley. Why? Because Facebook has now trained a wide swath of tech workers in the bay area to be reckless and to freely work against the interests of FaceBook users. As they move from company to company, they are going to take this reckless approach with them... and it will infect other tech companies.
15
@Chuck
It's definitely not a perfect company, but let's remember, it has given voices to everyone in the world. What other platform, can somebody in Africa, write a message and instantly 100 people in other countries can benefit from that message... with no 'filter' with no 'approval pending' and no 'big brother' filtering out their words...
Think of the past 60+ years of the TV, where all the programming was a carefully designed message delivered to your living room, with no feedback allowed whatsoever. Did the big media companies get shut down for being unfair?
I know facebook is not perfect, but I do have to give them credit for basically making the world's largest 'whiteboard' and giving *everyone in the world* a dry erase marker.
Interested to hear if you have any proposals for better solutions... what would you prefer instead of facebook and their current privacy policies and controls... who should house that data and who should control it and how should it be used? I have seen Zuckerberg speak on these topics and personally I feel he is doing a good job of protecting that data from a much worse fate...
5
Facebook began life as a brand new kind of Digital Solar System in the Early 21st Century Information Age. It was truly a “New Hope.” I have been a member since 2008. In many ways, it has brought me great happiness. Nevertheless, I feel that as the 2020s approach, FB has unfortunately regressed to becoming a Black Hole of toxic Deep Fake quasi-Data & logically inverted pseudo-Metadata. Its UX used to be elegant and simple. FB, v.2019.7 is a maximalist bombardment of the senses like Times Square at New Year’s Eve. “Build, build, build, grow, grow, grow” doesn’t help create communities. It disrupts the very fabric of what a community is supposed to be. Extreme Branding 24/7/365 distracts populations from healing and communicating authentically. Design is always a community’s best friend. I have faith that Zuck, Sandberg & their Silicon Family will embrace the wisdom of Mr. Hughes’ vision for an Analog Revival that keeps/resurrects all that was useful and good about the original FB when it first took root in Cambridge’s sacred epicenter of learning, innovation and creativity. Real Time is the new Screen Time. Pass it on...
1
@Evan Durst Kreeger
Zuckerberg and Sandberg must be removed before any real reform will take place at FaceBook.
Until then, they will simply obfuscate, lobby, even bribe the power base in DC to keep the status quo.
25
Where were the regulators that allowed all this vertical integration? Instagram, WhatsApp...? Where were they then?
They were silent.
13
@Juh CLU
Generally, regulation is reactive, not proactive, in the US.
They are really weak at getting ahead of the curve on things like this.. and simply come in years later after all the damage is done.. and take knife to the offending corporation. US corporate history is littered with the results of reactive regulation.
4
@Juh CLU Instagram had 30 million users and 0 revenue when it was purchased and losing money. Whatsapp was bleeding money and looking to sell. It's probably still a money loser and they were looking to sell to a larger company. If it wasn't Facebook, Whatsapp would have been purchased by Google or Amazon or Yahoo.
Instagram isn't successful because of itself. It took a lot of highly dedicated people to make it a success that's now only showing the dividends after years of hard work, investment, and luck.
Instagram could have easily turned into Tumblr (yahoo) if you don't have the right amount of leadership (Zuckerberg) and talent to invest in it year after year to give it the opportunity to become a powerhouse.
3