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Like most “break up the platforms” arguments, this one suffers from an Underpants Gnome gap between the problem it’s identifying and the “solution" it proposes. nytimes.com/2019/05/09/opi…
Let’s stipulate Facebook’s enormous ability to influence the dissemination of news stories and political messages is concerning. Instagram is pretty peripheral to that, and WhatsApp is already e2e encrypted, severely limiting Facebook’s ability to put its thumb on the scale.
So if “break up Facebook” means “force it to spin off Instagram and WhatsApp,” maybe there’s a case that advances some *other* goals, but it’s hard to see how it does much to address the thing Hughes has just identified as his core concern.
