The only anti-trust action needed is to prevent Facebook from buying out the competition. Without Instagram, WhatsApp acquisitions, Facebook would have already withered down.
Facebook has by far the worst corporate governance among big tech companies. Everyone is just competing for Zuckerberg's attention and approval (Microsoft has the best).
The top 4 apps are 100% controlled by one person, Mark Zuckerberg.
There is no board or committee that can overrule him. If rumors are true, he cut a deal with the previous White House to avoid regulation, so even government (until recently) couldn't stop him.
There is one, semi-educated, ruthless, unscrupulous person running an unprecedented experiment on billions of under-informed people. He has access to a substantial percentage of all messages sent between people every day.
No one person (even an elected person) should have that much power.
This is an interesting take, but what a weird modifier to add in here. IMO education level is more or less irrelevant here, but if one had to force it into the equation, it seems to me that his Harvard pedigree, even if he didn't graduate, makes your picture of an out-of-touch unelected puppetmaster _more_ sinister.
In college, many of us learn the ethics around experimentation, including the ugly history of experiments performed in secret without ethics boards and without concern for the subjects.
I included that qualifier only to suggest that Zuckerberg likely didn't have the training in ethical experimentation that many of us got in college.
I tend to agree that a Harvard education makes someone more suspect, but only (in my opinion) if the degree is an MBA. Their undergrads, on average, have always seemed to me to be as sincere and compassionate as any other school's.
>In college, many of us learn the ethics around experimentation, including the ugly history of experiments performed in secret without ethics boards and without concern for the subjects.
You have more faith than I do that this lesson is actually absorbed. And it's leaving aside the fact that the kind of elitist detachment from the masses that underpins your framing is going to be correlated with getting education, not lacking it.
Though again, I don't think any of these effects would be strong enough to be worth mentioning.
I'm convinced that WhatsApp is Facebook's most valuable property, not Facebook itself. It's ubiquitous in the developing world, whereas I think (overoptimistically?) that Facebook itself is dying.
> The rest of the T10 have "one owner": Snapchat, Skype, TikTok, UC Browser (Alibaba), Youtube, and Twitter.
I think you mean that each of those apps has a different owner? Or do you actually mean that there is a single entity that owns all of them, e.g. a common investor?
By my count, 4 of the other 6 are owned by companies that are either in the FAANG acronym or would be if the FAANG grouping were internally coherent (or considered foreign companies):
- Youtube (Google)
- Skype (Microsoft)
- UC Browser (Alibaba)
- TikTok (Bytedance)
Now all we need is for Amazon to buy Snapchat (or anyone to want Twitter).
Microsoft board and board Committees does their work and contributes. They also have good basic rules for corporate governance. They have Lead Independent Director. Also the independent directors have time to meet in executive session without company management.
The board is not just same minded good guys club who hangs together, or lapdogs of the CEO. Microsoft has been is surprisingly Teflon-like in diplomatic in relations to foreign governments and public opinions. Part of it is of course Nadella, but another part is the corporate governance that directs Nadella.
Good example is how smoothly they handled Bill Gates scandal. Bill Gates decided to resign from the board for "completely unrelated reasons" after Microsoft's board of directors hired a law firm to investigate a Gates romantic relationship with a Microsoft employee. It shows some gut to just toss away founder and major owner in order to look after the company interest.
Facebook has by far the worst corporate governance among big tech companies. Everyone is just competing for Zuckerberg's attention and approval (Microsoft has the best).