The monopoly of Facebook, in danger | The precandid …

A leak has reignited the debate on the regulation of large technology companies. The audio shared by the site The edge A private meeting in Facebook's offices revealed a Mark Zuckerberg visibly upset by the antitrust proposals of the Democratic presidential candidate of the United States, Elizabeth Warren. The disagreement between the two personalities revived the discussion of the economic power of the social network, which manifested itself, for example, in their project to create their own cryptocurrency, not to mention the many crossroads with politics on issues such as debate. for greater encryption of messages, the use of personal data in election campaigns and the dissemination of hate messages.

"Elizabeth Warren wants to divide big business and if she is elected president, I bet we will have a great legal conflict and we will win. (…) I do not want to take legal action against our government. We want to work with the government and do good things. But finally, if someone threatens something as existential, you go into the ring and you fight. This has been expressed, without too many tricks, the founder and current CEO of Facebook. In short, is there room for the measures proposed by Warren? And second, what would it imply or how far would the pugilistic metaphor go to the ring?

For the journalist New YorkerEvan Osnos, "When a concentrated private power controls as much as we see and hear, it has power that rivals or exceeds that of the elected government." In dialogue with Page / 12Ernesto Calvo, a professor of government and politics at the University of Maryland, says: "Facebook has an annual net profit of more than $ 20 billion. This means he has plenty of resources to fund political and advertising campaigns, both in the United States and around the world. For the moment, Facebook has not used this vast capital with the aggressiveness with which it could be used. "

Faced with this scenario, Warren (who currently appears second in the polls behind former Vice President Joe Biden on the way to the Democratic nomination) said the government "should split up monopolies and promote markets. competitive ". US antitrust laws "empower regulators to cancel mergers that reduce competition," said the senator. Facebook is one of the most powerful examples of business mergers, after the purchase of WhatsApp and Instagram. For Warren, canceling these changes would spur technology companies to "be more responsive to user concerns."

Calvo does not doubt the monopolistic position of the company founded by Zuckerberg: "Facebook has about 2.4 billion users. Since this is not allowed as a platform in China, this means that almost 40% of the world's population has a Facebook account. WeChat, used almost exclusively in China, accounts for half of the users. This monopolistic position as a social network also has great benefits for the rest of its integrated activities, "he explains.

In an interview with New Yorker At the end of last year, Zuckerberg was already opposed to the idea (made visible by Warren but shared by several Democratic lawmakers) to split Facebook to foster competition. "The field is extremely competitive, I think sometimes people think" Well, there is no exact alternative for Facebook. "In fact, it makes it more competitive because we compete with Twitter and Snapchat as a means of broadcasting, and we offer messaging when iMessage is installed on every iPhone." Locked in his own contradiction, Zuckerberg acknowledges that Facebook is so powerful that it can compete in multiple areas with several small businesses.

Despite the blind of the young entrepreneur, there is still in the United States, even among the most conservative sectors, the idea of ​​a necessary competition to encourage the entry of new players in the market. That's why it was no wonder that in 2016, President Donald Trump does not allow the merger of AT & T with Warner (although this year the court American authorized the operation). The 1998 US case law against Microsoft is often cited for monopolistic practices (notably to include Internet Explorer in Windows in order to keep the browser market), as Google's gateway to the market and as a backdrop. that progress can be made against privileged practices.

One of the last fronts that Zuckerberg has opened to continue to bet on the growth of his business is Libra, the cryptocurrency that is currently facing strong resistance, mainly from the US Democratic Bank. Facebook imagines Libra as a new global cryptocurrency, a virtual currency that can be used via smartphones, and allows the entry into the financial system of billions of people who do not have access to banks. In this sense, Calvo does not believe that Zuckerberg can realize his wish: "The technical presentation of the cryptocurrency of Facebook was very badly received. This is far from technically feasible and the current configuration would not be acceptable to most regulators. "

Use and abuse of personal data

Debates on the regulation of personal data go beyond (or correspond to) the economic domain. They show how companies work with different governments around the world. Last Thursday, the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia asked Facebook to allow its authorities to avoid the high encryption used in its courier services. According to them, this would detect criminal acts, including terrorism and child pornography, in accordance with the "Cloud Act", which will allow British and American law enforcement to demand electronic data on serious crimes directly to technology companies.

But is it not also dangerous to allow the state to access this overwhelming amount of personal data? "Absolutely," Bald answers without hesitation. "In fact, this is a project initiated and serviced by the FBI-led US national security agencies, and increased regulation by states is not an attractive option if these states use then privileged access to control and political manipulation of its citizens, "he adds.

Every day, at any time, we provide Facebook with countless personal and sensitive data, which may or may not pass the social network filter. Journalist Evan Osnos said in April, Zuckerberg told investors that it was "easier to build an artificial intelligence system that detects a nipple than the one detecting discriminatory speech." This (voluntary or involuntary) difficulty in detecting racist speeches may have had its most dramatic episode in Myanmar. Homicides and torture against the Muslim minority in the Southeast Asian country forced the massive displacement of the Rohingya tribe. In 2014, Wirathu, a highly respected Buddhist monk on the social network, promoted violence. Facebook's reaction against the massive spread of such violent content has been late and selective.

The Cambridge Analytica scandal was much closer to our experience. Only in March 2018, before the complaint of misuse of personal data and after becoming aware of the links with the Russian government, with the clear intention of harming former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton (not counting irregularities detected around the world), Zuckerberg He began to accept the seriousness of the facts. From then on, Calvo recognizes some changes: "There are lesser degrees of freedom to access Facebook's data and use it for political purposes."

New challenges arise. And there is no doubt that in recent years, governments and big tech companies have been incestuous. We will have to see whether this new attempt to split Facebook's digital monopoly will be realized or whether it will only be part of a dialectic game between powerful people that will not allow (as usual) profound and relevant changes.

Report: Guido Vassallo.