0Professor Who Coined Term 'Net Neutrality' Thinks It's Time To Break Up Facebook (theverge.com)	null/SLASHDOT/0102640274		70
i  Thursday September 06, 2018 @11:30PM (BeauHD)
i  from the easier-said-than-done dept.
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i    [1]pgmrdlm shares a report from The Verge:
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i    >  Best  known  for coining the phrase "net neutrality" and his
i    book  The  Master  Switch:  The  Rise  and  Fall of Information
i    Empires,  Wu  has  a  new  book  coming  out in November called
i    [2]The  Curse  of Bigness: Antitrust in the New Gilded Age . In
i    it,   he   argues  compellingly  for  a  return  to  aggressive
i    antitrust  enforcement  in the style of Teddy Roosevelt, saying
i    that  Google,  Facebook,  Amazon, and other huge tech companies
i    [3]are  a  threat  to democracy as they get bigger and bigger .
i    "We  live in America, which has a strong and proud tradition of
i    breaking   up  companies  that  are  too  big  for  inefficient
i    reasons,"  Wu  told  me  on  this week's Vergecast. "We need to
i    reverse  this  idea  that it's not an American tradition. We've
i    broken up dozens of companies."
i    
i    >
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i    >  "I  think  if  you  took  a  hard look at the acquisition of
i    WhatsApp  and Instagram, the argument that the effects of those
i    acquisitions  have  been anticompetitive would be easy to prove
i    for  a number of reasons," says Wu. And breaking up the company
i    wouldn't  be  hard,  he  says.  "What would be the harm? You'll
i    have  three competitors. It's not 'Oh my god, if you get rid of
i    WhatsApp  and  Instagram,  well then the whole world's going to
i    fall  apart.'  It  would  be  like  'Okay,  now  you  have some
i    companies  actually  trying  to  offer  you  an  alternative to
i    Facebook.'"   Breaking   up   Facebook  (and  other  huge  tech
i    companies  like  Google  and  Amazon) could be simple under the
i    current  law,  suggests  Wu.  But it could also lead to a major
i    rethinking  of  how  antitrust law should work in a world where
i    the  giant  platform  companies  give  their  products away for
i    free,  and the ability for the government to restrict corporate
i    power  seems  to be diminishing by the day. And it demands that
i    we  all  think  seriously  about  the  conditions  that  create
i    innovation.  "I  think  everyone's  steering  way away from the
i    monopolies,  and  I  think  it's hurting innovation in the tech
i    sector," says Wu.
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i    [1] https://slashdot.org/~pgmrdlm
i    
i    [2] https://www.amazon.com/Curse-Bigness-Antitrust-New-Gilded/-
i    dp/0999745468
i    
i    [3] https://www.theverge.com/2018/9/4/17816572/tim-wu-facebook-
i    regulation-interview-curse-of-bigness-antitrust
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