I disagree with Facebook heavy Chris Hughes’s prescription for the company in an op-ed at the New York Times:
Mark is a good, kind person. But I’m angry that his focus on growth led him to sacrifice security and civility for clicks. I’m disappointed in myself and the early Facebook team for not thinking more about how the News Feed algorithm could change our culture, influence elections and empower nationalist leaders. And I’m worried that Mark has surrounded himself with a team that reinforces his beliefs instead of challenging them.
The government must hold Mark accountable. For too long, lawmakers have marveled at Facebook’s explosive growth and overlooked their responsibility to ensure that Americans are protected and markets are competitive. Any day now, the Federal Trade Commission is expected to impose a $5 billion fine on the company, but that is not enough; nor is Facebook’s offer to appoint some kind of privacy czar. After Mark’s congressional testimony last year, there should have been calls for him to truly reckon with his mistakes. Instead the legislators who questioned him were derided as too old and out of touch to understand how tech works. That’s the impression Mark wanted Americans to have, because it means little will change.
We are a nation with a tradition of reining in monopolies, no matter how well intentioned the leaders of these companies may be. Mark’s power is unprecedented and un-American.
It is time to break up Facebook.
I disagree. There is no handy way to break Facebook up that actually reduces its power. For practical purposes it is impossible to divide it geographically, the solution arrived at for Standard Oil and Ma Bell.
It’s time to make its business model illegal by greatly strengthening individual privacy rights. That’s the direction in which the Europeans have been going and they’re right.
However, the situation does highlight the inability of our judiciary and legislature to deal with today’s megacorporations. Eight figure fines are pin money for them. They need to think at least one order of magnitude larger. That’s a tall order for people whose last contact with math was high school trig and that was a half century ago.
Kill it with a paywall tax on users.