The Federal Trade Commission is reportedly considering throwing a wrench into Facebook’s vision of world domination, preventing the company from further integrating its separate apps with each other
Photo: Drew Angerer/Getty Images The Wall Street Journal reported this afternoon that the Federal Trade Commission is considering throwing a wrench into Facebook’s vision of world domination, preventing the company from further integrating its separate apps with each other.
Calls to break up the company have only grown louder over the past few years; many experts say the most effective way to do that, and to increase competition among tech platforms, would be to undo Facebook’s acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp. This would spin them back off into independent entities — three enormous companies that would compete with each other. Facebook is, one might argue, less useful globally than WhatsApp, and in cool-factor terms, far behind Instagram. So you can see why it acquired these companies, and why it potentially can’t afford to lose them.
Facebook has mastered the art of stalling and beating around the bush, and it thought it had a plan to avoid disaster. The idea was to mash these three services together so thoroughly that breaking them up would be impossible. Earlier this year, Mark Zuckerberg declared that the “future is private” and announced plans to integrate all of his messaging services together so that they would become interoperable. He also planned to introduce end-to-end encryption to all of them.
But the FTC’s reported path would put a halt to all that — though in order to stop Facebook’s interoperability project, the commission would need a majority of its five-member body to agree, and then need to file an injunction in court. If one is granted, it could be the first step toward actually breaking up Facebook. One could assume the company has a few other contingency plans up its sleeve.
Malaysia Latest News, Malaysia Headlines
Similar News:You can also read news stories similar to this one that we have collected from other news sources.
FTC weighs action against Facebook over how its apps interact: reportThe U.S. Federal Trade Commission is considering seeking a preliminary injunctio...
Read more »
The Worst Movies of the DecadeA Hollywood Reporter film critic’s picks include an embarrassingly un-sexy erotic trilogy, rom-coms utterly devoid of laughs or chemistry, a few disastrous genre mash-ups and more.
Read more »
Facebook falls on report FTC weighing injunction over antitrust concernsThe Federal Trade Commission is considering seeking an injunction against Facebook over antitrust concerns, The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday.
Read more »
House Democrats pass drug price cap bill, escalating 2020 health care warsThe bill would empower the Health & Human Services secretary to negotiate annually for the best prices on at least 50 costly brand-name drugs and up to 250 medications, including insulin. Prices would be capped at 1.2x their cost in certain other countries
Read more »
FTC may try to delay Facebook's plan to integrate its apps, Wall Street Journal reportsFacebook's stock took a dive on Thursday following a report that federal regulators may seek to prevent the company from more tightly integrating its social media products.
Read more »
Leveraging Technology To Combat Illegal Content OnlineFormer police officer Holly Lawrence takes her fight against abuse and exploitation online at SmugMug, Inc.
Read more »