The FTC as well as a coalition of attorneys general from 48 states have filed lawsuits against Facebook over alleged anti-trust violations. Yahoo Finance’s Akiko Fujita joins Seana Smith to discuss the details of the allegation and to break down the many ways that Washington is imposing new restrictions on Big Tech.
Video Transcript
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SEANA SMITH: Welcome back. We are joined now by Akiko Fujita, who has been covering the many ways that Washington has been looking to regulate the US tech industry, everything from amending Section 230 to even breaking up big tech companies. And Akiko, we need to start with the news out of Facebook, the FTC and a group of state attorneys general suing Facebook over alleged antitrust violations. What are the implications of this?
AKIKO FUJITA: Yeah, it seems timely that they’re having this discussion today, especially given what transpired today. Essentially, what we’re hearing from the FTC and a coalition of 48 state attorneys general is that Facebook engaged in anti-competitive behavior to use its market dominance to crush the competition.
New York Attorney General Letitia James, who led the investigation on behalf of the 48 states, saying, in her words, that Facebook has used its dominance and monopoly power to crush smaller rivals and snuff out competition, all at the expense of everyday users. And specifically, the FTC going as far as to say in its statement that it would seek an injunction that could, among other things, require divestitures of assets, including Instagram and WhatsApp. So the FTC going for a potential breakup here in that statement.
Facebook, of course, not the only company that has come under a lot of scrutiny this year, especially as it relates to antitrust. You’ll recall back in October, the Department of Justice, along with the state attorneys general of 11 different states, filed a similar lawsuit against Google, saying it also used its market dominance to violate US antitrust law.
In that particular case, the Department of Justice said that Google unlawfully maintained a monopoly in general search services and search advertising, a violation of the US antitrust law. It has really been a culmination of well over a year of investigation on the behalf of Congress, as well as the state attorneys general. And we’re starting to see the fruits of those investigations.
And Seana, it’s been a pretty incredible year when you consider just how many tech hearings there were. A lot of people remember what played out over the summer when we saw the CEOs of Facebook, Amazon, as well as Google and Apple, all testified remotely, something that some analysts sort of compared to the big tobacco hearings.
ADAM SHAPIRO: Hey, Akiko, what happened to the trade war? That was the big headline before the pandemic.
AKIKO FUJITA: It was the big headline. And this year, we saw a bit of a pivot here as it relates to US-China relations, moving away from the trade war into a tech war. And Adam, I know we’ve talked about this a lot throughout the year, especially as it relates to TikTok. And I’m going to walk you through a very speedy timeline here because a lot of people may have forgotten what played out.
Back in March, we had lawmakers push for a ban on government devices using TikTok. And then over the summer, we had President Trump sign those executive orders, calling for a ban of TikTok, as well as TenCent’s WeChat. Also a separate order coming from the Committee on Foreign Investment, calling for Byte Dance, the parent company, to divest that acquisition of Musical.ly that resulted in TikTok.
To this day, TikTok is not banned. And we just saw, on Monday, a judge over in Washington, DC, the very latest to say the Commerce Department cannot move forward with this ban. So that remains in a holding pattern. Also, the potential spinoff of the US operations where Oracle and Walmart were involved, that hasn’t finalized yet. There’s going to be a big question mark going into 2021 to see how aggressively a new President Joe Biden will move forward on this issue of tech from China and the concerns about national security. I don’t expect that one to go away, although the rhetoric may shift a little.
ADAM SHAPIRO: Akiko Fujita, thank you.
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