By Suing Facebook for Violating Antitrust Laws, the FTC and State AGs Move to Protect Democracy and Deconcentrate Control Over Speech
The U.S. v. Facebook complaint is a critical step toward ending the corporation’s dangerous control over the flow of information and stopping its monopolistic pattern of buying, copying, or killing competitors
WASHINGTON – The Federal Trade Commission and attorneys general from 46 states, the District of Columbia, and Guam today filed an antitrust lawsuit alleging that Facebook engaged in anti-competitive acquisitions and behavior to build and maintain its monopoly power.
Following the Department of Justice’s antitrust case against Google on Oct. 20 and the Sept. 29 House antitrust subcommittee’s groundbreaking Big Tech report, the complaint brings us closer to the day when Americans fully rein in the platform monopolists in ways that protect our democracy and individual liberty. This is a watershed moment in American history, and the citizens of our nation should be proud.
The Open Markets Institute was among the first to call for the breakup of Facebook, and we are happy to see America’s law enforcers have embraced our thinking. We look forward to working with law enforcers on the next stage of this task, which is to apply traditional nondiscrimination rules to all platform monopolies and to other providers of essential services, to ensure that they never manipulate citizens and instead always strive to serve the interests of every individual user.
“Today, the FTC and state attorneys general filed an antitrust case against Facebook that couldn’t have come at a more crucial time in our nation’s history. Facebook’s role as a gatekeeper of speech has had devastating impact on the marketplace of ideas, the public sphere of debate, and our elections. The platform’s monopolistic control of information flow allows Facebook to pick the winners and losers of speech based on what maximizes its profits – and the winner is disinformation. Facebook has maintained its monopoly power not by outperforming competitive threats, but rather by muscling them out of the competition altogether or by buying them. The evidence that Facebook has violated Section 2 of the Sherman Act and Section 7 of the Clayton Act is overwhelming,” said Sally Hubbard, director of enforcement strategy at Open Markets Institute.
“The case against Facebook is a huge victory for the American people and for American democracy. The corporation – along with Google and Amazon – poses an immense and growing threat to our personal liberty and to some of our most essential democratic institutions and practices, including our free press and electoral systems. It is vital that we see this case through to the destruction of Facebook’s dangerous business model, which depends on spying on the most intimate aspects our lives, and then using that information to manipulate each and every one of us. It is vital that we break Facebook’s stranglehold once and for all over the systems we rely on to communicate and share news and ideas,” said Barry Lynn, the executive director of the Open Markets Institute. “Today’s action is also an example of the strength and resiliency of America’s democratic system. In the absence of federal leadership, the American people were able to use their state governments both to bring a case directly against Facebook and to force Washington to act. Many grave threats remain, and much work remains to be done, but the American people are awake and clearly intend to see this through to the end.”
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