Facebook's Argument Against a Company Breakup: We Keep You Safe

Faced with new questions about whether it’s a monopoly, Facebook Inc. is making a bold argument: owning so many communications platforms helps keep users safe.

On Tuesday, the European Parliament asked Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg whether he should be allowed to own two of the world’s largest chat applications, Messenger and WhatsApp, in addition to the biggest social network and the photo app Instagram. The company answered Wednesday in an online post, saying there are “many consumer benefits” to having Facebook control so much of the world’s communication. “By working together we have been able to improve safety across all these services," the company wrote. When Facebook sees spam, exploitative images or illegal content, for example, it can obliterate it on all platforms at once.