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I'm hearing a lot of people saying things like 'just breaking up Facebook won't solve the blah blah blah.' Yes, we know. Read more than a headline. Break up and regulate. Let's have multiple car companies. Let's also have seatbelt mandates. Break up and regulate.
The point of anti-monopoly policy is to shape markets to make us free. It isn't to break up companies. It isn't to deal with 'bad people.' It's to ensure that no one can concentrate power in ways that prevent individual liberty. That means public structuring of markets.
Saying 'just breaking up Facebook won't solve the problem' doesn't reflect being clever. It reflects profound ignorance about history and policy. Virtually no one has ever suggested just breaking up companies. We've been doing anti-monopolism for hundreds of years.
Facebook is both too big and too concentrated, AND social media is organized poorly. We can break up the company, impose inter-operability mandates, and create a credible Do Not Track mandate. We can impose liability for non-neutral moderating. Structure markets.
Lots of cool techies say things like 'Stupid policymakers I have this really neat solution for dealing with Google/FB/Uber involving decentralized yada yada.' It virtually always requires a public utility style rule we've thought about. This stuff isn't rocket science.
We want many car companies, but we don't want those car companies to compete based on compromising public safety. So we place public rules on the entire market and its business practices. This is as true for social media/online ads as anything else. Competition and public rules!
All markets are regulated. FB just happens to be regulated to allow Zuck to set terms and conditions for global social media and online advertising. The question isn't whether we regulate, it's who regulates. Breaking up and regulating FB is the democratic way to act.
Last point. If you have ideas about what rules to implement, recognize that you are part of the anti-monopoly tradition, which has always included engineers and businesspeople. This is about your freedom. But you are part of this tradition. Learn about it.
