The Federal Trade Commission sued to break up Facebook on Wednesday, asking a federal court to force the sell-off of assets such as Instagram and WhatsApp as independent businesses.
“Facebook has maintained its monopoly position by buying up companies that present competitive threats and by imposing restrictive policies that unjustifiably hinder actual or potential rivals that Facebook does not or cannot acquire,” the commission said in a lawsuit filed in federal court in Washington, D.C.
The lawsuit asks the court to order the “divestiture of assets, divestiture or reconstruction of businesses (including, but not limited to, Instagram and/or WhatsApp),” as well as other possible relief the court might want to add.
The announcement is a major step that has been years in the making, with Facebook and several other major U.S. technology companies having grown quickly in the past 10 years with little government oversight.
But the lack of scrutiny has changed recently, with a series of lawsuits that now threaten to rein in the dominance of big American tech firms that have grown to be among the world’s most valuable companies.
Attorneys general from 48 states and territories said they were filing their own lawsuit against Facebook, reflecting the broad and bipartisan concern about how much power Facebook and its CEO Mark Zuckerberg have accumulated on the internet.
“Breakup Facebook” has become a rally cry for the company’s critics — including one of its wealthy founders, Chris Hughes, who last year wrote a 6,000-word case for a break-up.
Facebook did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the two lawsuits.
But Zuckerberg has previously vowed a vigorous defense. Last year, he told employees in an internal meeting that if the government sued to break up Facebook, “then I would bet that we will have a legal challenge, and I would bet that we will win the legal challenge.”
“At the end of the day, if someone’s going to try to threaten something that existential, you go to the mat and you fight,” Zuckerberg said.
Even if government lawyers win a judgment against Facebook, it would be up to a federal judge what to do about the company’s dominant position. It’s rare for a big company to be broken up, but it’s happened in the past, as with AT&T in 1984.
The states’ suit does not explicitly call for Facebook to be broken apart, instead asking a federal court to halt Facebook’s anti-competitive conduct in general and take any other action that the court sees fit.
“By using its vast troves of data and money, Facebook has squashed or hindered what the company perceived as threats,” New York Attorney General Letitia James said at a news conference announcing the states’ lawsuit.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
Source: | This article originally belongs to Nbcnews.com
