Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez denounces Facebook during the blackout, saying the company’s “monopolistic behavior” is destructive to “free society and democracy”

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Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) listens to Facebook President and CEO Mark Zuckerberg testifies before the House Financial Services Committee on

Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) listens to Facebook President and CEO Mark Zuckerberg testifies before the House Financial Services Committee on “A Review of Facebook and Its Impact on Financial Services and housing areas “at the Rayburn House office building in Washington, DC on October 23, 2019. MANDEL NGAN / AFP via Getty Images

  • A Monday blackout took Facebook-owned businesses, including WhatsApp and Instagram, offline.

  • Representative Ocasio-Cortez criticized the company saying it was a threat to “free society and democracy”.

  • See more stories on the Insider business page.

Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez blamed what she called Facebook’s “monopolistic behavior” for the impacts of Monday’s Facebook outage that affected WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook and Messenger.

She specifically responded to a complaint that Latin American communities were disproportionately affected by the Facebook outage on Monday, due to heavy use of WhatsApp.

“It’s almost as if Facebook’s monopoly mission to own, copy or destroy any competing platform has incredibly destructive effects on free society and democracy,” the MP said on Twitter, responding to the editor. de Forbes, José Caparroso.

“Remember: WhatsApp was not created by Facebook. It was an independent success. FB got scared and bought it,” Ocasio-Cortez continued.

During the blackout, Caparroso tweeted: “Latin America lives on WhatsApp. I am surprised by so many people who underestimate how catastrophic this fall has been.”

Other social media users agreed. “The repercussions of the WhatsApp outage in the rest of the world are vast and devastating. It’s like the equivalent of your phone and all your loved ones’ phones being turned off without warning. The app essentially functions as an unregulated utility.” , said Aura Bogado, reporter and producer at Reveal.

“If Facebook’s monopolistic behavior was controlled when it should have been (perhaps around the time it started acquiring competitors like Instagram), the continents of people who depend on WhatsApp and IG for communication or commerce would be fine right now, ”Ocasio -Cortez added. “Break them. “

Representative Ocasio-Cortez has been a strong supporter of the big tech disruption and backed Senator Elizabeth Warren’s plan during her 2020 presidential campaign, according to Politico.

“Facebook as a core communication platform while selling advertisements and also being a surveillance platform,” Ocasio-Cortez told Politico in 2019. “These functions should be dismantled, but how is it? perceived and how it is approached is what we need to comb through. “

The Facebook outage lasted 6 hours and was reinstated by 6 p.m. ET.

“* Sincere * apologies to all who are currently affected by the outages of services powered by Facebook. We’re having network issues and teams are working as fast as possible to debug and restore as quickly as possible, ”said Mike Schroepfer, CTO of Facebook, via Twitter this afternoon.

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