The Hill: Facebook faces most serious breakup threat yet from lawsuits

December 12, 2020 Media

The twin lawsuits filed against Facebook this week by the government and more than 40 attorneys general are the most serious effort to break the social media giant up to date.

The cases, which differ slightly, focus on the allegation that Facebook made acquisitions in an effort to decrease competition in the social network marketplace and ultimately worsened the quality of options available to consumers.

The Federal Trade Commission and 48 state and territory attorneys general propose a solution to that issue: divestiture.

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The last time that the government mandated a breakup of a company at the scale of Facebook’s was in 1984 when the Bell System was split into seven independent telecom providers.

For Matt Stoller, director of research at the anti-monopoly organization the American Economic Liberties Project, the two lawsuits filed this week, along with the DOJ’s suit against Google, could constitute the most important antitrust case since the Bell breakup.

“First of all, these are very important companies that are extremely powerful, so trying to address their monopolistic behavior will have significant impacts on our media and communication markets,” he said. “Second is that it could restructure antitrust law … and then third, it signifies a broader political shift in how Americans relate to corporate power.”