Easiest Fix for Facebook: Break It Up
Antitrust officials shouldn’t be scared to bust up a social-media giant that’s grown too powerful.
More options, please.
Photographer: Kirill Kudryavtsev/AFP/Getty ImagesOccam’s razor is a principle that says when something happens that can be explained in multiple ways, the simplest explanation is usually the right one. The same is true of solutions: The simplest, most straightforward solution is usually the best way to solve a problem.
In the U.S., social media giant Facebook Inc. has become a problem. It makes its money — $23.3 billion in 2017 adjusted earnings1— by running roughshod over privacy concerns, selling users’ data to advertisers. Along with Amazon, Apple and Google, it has “aggregated more economic value and influence than nearly any other commercial entity in history,” as the marketing professor Scott Galloway wrote in Esquire earlier this year.