This is big, but not surprising. The antitrust pressure has been building against Facebook and Big Tech for a while now. A few thoughts: https://twitter.com/mikeisaac/status/1336757239390953472

The most compelling argument, for me, isn’t that Facebook is operating a monopoly on social media services, simply by virtue of owning three platforms—but that the sheer quantity of data that Facebook has exclusive access to, through these platforms, is an anti-competitive force.

Facebook owns Instagram and WhatsApp. But other social platforms exist. Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, Snap, WeChat, Twitch, Discord, Reddit, etc. Facebook doesn’t own the attention economy. You can freely live your online life without touching a Facebook-related product.

One company owning multiple platforms is not, in itself, necessarily a bar to competition. However, one company having exclusive ownership of vast amounts of user data, with no potential for interoperability or access to competitors, can be anti-competitive.

Tech is constantly changing, and there will always be new and better products. However, new startups can have a difficult time competing with Facebook and other large platforms, due to a lack of access to data and to the phenomenon known as “network effects.”

“Network effect” describes the concept that some services become more useful or attractive to consumers when more consumers use the service. For example, you might be using Facebook, not because you like the product, but because all your friends and family are already there.

New startups have an uphill battle to reach users due to network effects, even if they have better products. Snap had a better product, but they quickly lost out once Instagram copied them w/Stories. Not because Stories was better, but because everyone was already on IG.

Ok this thread is rapidly getting into “should just be a blog post” territory, but I want to mention one last thing:

Please leave Section 230 out of this.

We can separate the antitrust claims against Facebook from the speech and content moderation issues related to Section 230. In fact, anticompetition enforcement might solve for some of the issues people have raised against Section 230!

The danger is conflating all these issues (speech, privacy, antitrust) and making this all about politics and the Techlash. Let’s not do that again, please.