Produced by ‘The Argument’
Facebook, Meta — whatever you want to call it, the tech titan has drawn a lot of ire, and not just from privacy advocates and people fighting misinformation. Antitrust regulators are sharpening their knives, too.
Forty-eight attorneys general want to slice the Big Tech giant into less-powerful pieces. They’ve joined a parallel lawsuit with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission to challenge what the agency alleges to be a monopoly engaging in illegal acquisitions. And overseas, Britain’s competition regulator has already directed Meta to sell one of its companies, the gif-sharing platform Giphy.
Meta reaches 3.6 billion monthly active users across platforms, including Instagram, WhatsApp and Facebook itself. Amid a growing techlash, how to fix Meta is a big question.
[You can listen to this episode of “The Argument” on Apple, Spotify or Google or wherever you get your podcasts.]
In today’s episode, Jane Coaston explores two opposing views on whether breaking up the company might help. Sarah Miller, the director of the American Economic Liberties Project, argues Meta engaged in anticompetitive practices by buying its rivals. And Tyler Cowen, an economist at George Mason University, is a champion of big business who lauds Meta as an “antimonopoly” engine.
(A full transcript of the episode will be available midday on the Times website.)
Mentioned in this episode:
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The case summary of Federal Trade Commission v. Facebook, Inc.
Credit…NurPhoto/Getty Images
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“The Argument” is produced by Phoebe Lett, Elisa Gutierrez, Vishakha Darbha and Matt Kwong; edited by Sarah Geis and Alison Bruzek; fact-checking by Kate Sinclair, Michelle Harris and Kristin Lin; music and sound design by Isaac Jones; engineering by Sonia Herrero; audience strategy by Shannon Busta.
