A Quick Summary of the House Judiciary Committee Report (Premium)

The House Judiciary Committee has called on Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google to be regulated and, in some cases, even broken up. They have made a solid case against each of these Big Tech giants, and while I find it hard to believe that any of these companies could or even should be broken up, their abuses are obvious and do need to be addressed.

The 449-page report is, of course, hard to get through in a reasonable amount of time, but I’m impressed by the thoroughness. If you were worried that our government was going to hell in a handbasket, this detailed and well-argued document is a timely reminder that there is still some solid thinking working on the behalf of U.S. citizens and, in this case, trying to protect us from ongoing abuse.

“The Subcommittee has followed the facts before it to produce this Report, which is the product of a considerable evidentiary and oversight record,” the report explains. “This record includes: 1,287,997 documents and communications; testimony from 38 witnesses; a hearing record that spans more than 1,800 pages; 38 submissions from 60 antitrust experts from across the political spectrum; and interviews with more than 240 market participants, former employees of the investigated platforms, and other individuals totaling thousands of hours. The Subcommittee has also held hearings and roundtables with industry and government witnesses, consultations with subject matter experts, and a careful---and at times painstaking review of large volumes of evidence provided by industry participants and regulators.”

What I’d like to do here is quickly summarize the arguments made against each company, the recommended solutions, and then, when possible, the public responses that each firm has made in the wake of this blockbuster filing. But I strongly recommend reading the report: There is much, much more detail in each case there.

In order...
Facebook
Facebook is the largest social networking platform in the world with several billion users across its five primary product offerings: Facebook (a social network), Instagram (a social network for photos and videos,), Facebook Messenger (a cross-platform messaging app), WhatsApp (another a cross-platform messaging app), and Oculus (a virtual reality gaming platform). The firm has over 3 billion monthly active users (MAUs) and generated $70 billion in revenues last year, mostly from advertising.

“Facebook has monopoly power in the market for social networking [and] monopoly power in online advertising in the social networking market,” the report says. “Facebook's monopoly power is firmly entrenched and unlikely to be eroded by competitive pressure from new entrants or existing firms.”

The report notes, correctly, that Facebook’s monopoly has been maintained and expanded by acquiring rivals like Instagram and WhatsApp when they threatened Facebook’s own offerings. It’s so powerful, the report claims, that its only real competition...

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