1. For at least five years, Facebook has been mired in significant public scandal. But Mark Zuckerberg simply doesn't care. Why? The answer is, he knows it doesn't matter, because the rule of law doesn't apply to the powerful. mattstoller.substack.com/p/enough-is-en…
2. Zuckerberg has heard intense criticism since he started Facebook at Harvard. And while criticism would seem shameful to a normal person, to him, the scandals, far from a problem, are why he won. He is worth $100 billion bc he grabbed whatever he could, and others didn't.
3. The legal problems, the settlements for deception with the Federal Trade Commission, the $5B fine for violating it, foreign investigations, and the antitrust suit... to him it's noise. He's a builder, and builders build. mattstoller.substack.com/p/enough-is-en…
4. That's why a week of bad headlines and Congressional anger doesn't bother him at all, why yesterday, he calmly rolled out a plan to run a virtual world where we will all live, work, and place. mattstoller.substack.com/p/enough-is-en… 
5. Yesterday, though, Lisa Monaco at the Department of Justice said the DOJ will go after corporate executives, and will target scandal-riven corporations, looking not at just one crime but at their "their whole criminal, civil and regulatory record." justice.gov/opa/speech/dep…
6. Then @ZephyrTeachout and @AlvinBraggNYC, both of whom may be in important law enforcement positions, wrote a piece on white collar crime in the Nation. Teachout went on Morning Joe and talked of possible *criminal charges* against Zuckerberg.
7. @KristaKBrown laid out possible criminal charges against Zuckerberg and FB insiders. They are (1) wire fraud for lying about video metrics, (2) wire fraud for lying about ad reach, (3) securities fraud for lying to investors... secure.everyaction.com/gCmBT7MMFEmiFR…
8. (4) insider trading for selling stock based on non-public material information, (5) defrauding the government and (6) price-fixing for dividing up ad auctions with Google. mattstoller.substack.com/p/enough-is-en…
9. The evidence comes from plaintiff lawsuits filed long before today's whistleblower du jour, @FrancesHaugen. But why are criminal charges important? Because so far, nothing we've done is creating change fast enough. The antitrust suit won't even go to trial until 2023!
10. We one held the powerful accountable to criminal charges, and the results were spectacular. The best antitrust enforcer in American history, Thurman Arnold, centered his enforcement strategy on criminal charges. The "social stigma' was *essential*. mattstoller.substack.com/p/enough-is-en…
11. When Standard Oil of New Jersey was colluding with Nazi-controlled firms, Arnold told Congress that “Indictments must go out to make that sort of thing hazardous.” And it worked. Executives almost immediately stopped colluding. mattstoller.substack.com/p/enough-is-en…
12. Arnold was so effective that just announcing an investigation cut prices in an industry by 18-33%. He overhauled the automobile, movie, dairy, housing, construction, tire, newsprint, steel, potash, sulfur, retail, fertilizer, tobacco, shoe, and agricultural industries.
13. Without concurrent criminal and civil charges, the only thing that would happen is long costly civil litigation, or as Arnold called it, "unemployment relief for attorneys." That's exactly what antitrust is today. mattstoller.substack.com/p/the-big-law-…
14. In other words, Zuckerberg is unconcerned with public scrutiny bc he believes that there will never be any real personal cost to what he does in acquiring illicit gains. His behavior is a response to our choice not to enforce the law. mattstoller.substack.com/p/enough-is-en…
15. And that's not of Zuckerberg's doing. Since the Enron scandal, as @eisingerj revealed in the Chicken Shit Club, we've stopped applying the law to the powerful. Wall Street bankers, the Sackler family and opiods, Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg - they get bonuses, not handcuffs.
16. Silicon Valley is the dumpster fire it is today because the DOJ had evidence of criminal wrongdoing - stealing from employees - by Google CEO Eric Schmidt and Apple CEO Steve Jobs, among others. And it chose not to bring criminal charges. mattstoller.substack.com/p/enough-is-en…
17. These people are not actually evil. Thurman Arnold saw a white collar executive violating the law as similar to someone going over the speed limit and accidentally killing a pedestrian. Not evil, but certainly worth prosecuting vigorously regardless. mattstoller.substack.com/p/enough-is-en…
18. Moreover, Zuckerberg is merely following the law as we've enforced it. If we actually said, no more fraud, price-fixing, etc, and did so with criminal indictments, this stuff would stop almost immediately. mattstoller.substack.com/p/crime-should…
19. And that's why a criminal investigation against Zuckerberg is so important. It would send an electric shock throughout Silicon Valley and C-Suites everywhere. Ethical actors would start winning boardroom fights. thenation.com/article/politi…
20. More fundamentally, investigating someone worth $100 billion for criminal actions would show, truly, that no one is above the law. And that's the bedrock of any free society. mattstoller.substack.com/p/enough-is-en…
21. If you liked this thread, consider signing up for my newsletter, BIG, in which I report and write about the problem of market power and liberty. And follow @KristaKBrown! mattstoller.substack.com/welcome
22. I just saw that Facebook is still making acquisitions to monopolize yet another space. Without actual meaningful penalties, this will not stop.
https://twitter.com/mikeisaac/status/1454188502862598144?s=21
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