The pros and cons of breaking up Facebook

The smartest insight and analysis, from all perspectives, rounded up from around the web: Facebook’s long campaign to keep conservatives happy didn’t buy it protection from a potential breakup, said Jordan Weissmann at Slate. Last week, the Federal Trade Commission and 46 states “filed a massive pair of antitrust suits” accusing Facebook of buying rivals Instagram and WhatsApp to prevent them from competing. The twin cases are “a concerted, full-frontal assault on Mark Zuckerberg’s empire,” and it’s what he deserves. For the past four years, Zuckerberg “bent over backward to avoid offending the Trump administration” while Facebook “kept the traffic flowing to the right-wing fever swamps.” Despite the company’s efforts to work the refs, Republicans have “continued to haul Zuckerberg” to Capitol Hill so they could gripe about “anti-conservative bias.” Zuckerberg thought “playing nice” would spare him a serious regulatory crackdown. He was wrong. Before you talk about breaking up Facebook, show some actual harm to consumers, said Jessica Melugin at the National Review. “Regardless of why Facebook decided to purchase Instagram and WhatsApp,” it has used its size and technological “know-how” to vastly improve them. After buying WhatsApp for $19 billion in 2014, it “dropped download and subscription fees”…
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