AOC says Facebook 'should be broken up,' 'subject to antitrust activity'
AOC says the case can be made for breaking up Facebook
Rep. Madison Cawthorn, R-N.C., discusses Facebook, Big Tech regulations and censorship on social media.
Meta – formerly known as Facebook – should be broken up, New York Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said in an interview with Yahoo Finance published Tuesday.
"They are acting as an advertiser, they are acting as both platform and vendor, they are … a communications platform, which has historically been a well-established domain of antitrust," she said in the interview.
The congresswoman added that because Meta has so many different assets built into one company, the case can be made for breaking up the company and "why they should be subject to antitrust activity."
The call to break up Facebook is not new; in 2020, 48 state attorneys general led by New York Attorney General Letitia James filed an antitrust lawsuit against Facebook in a bid to curtail what they described as the company’s "illegal monopoly" over the social media industry.
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The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) launched its own antitrust suit against Facebook in 2020, calling for the company’s acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp to be unwound. James said the coalition of attorneys general would coordinate with the FTC on ongoing legal action.
Lawmakers have previously pressed Facebook on its 2012 and 2014 purchases of Instagram and WhatsApp, respectively, which the FTC vetted at the time. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and the company's lawyers have previously defended the company's purchases of WhatsApp and Instagram.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez talks with a reporter on the House steps of the U.S. Capitol on Aug. 3, 2021. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
But AOC took more issue with Facebook's impact on the spread of "disinformation" in her interview with Yahoo Finance.
"When you look at a company like Facebook, and the completely corrosive ways that they have exercised an abuse, I believe, in civil society writ large – not just our democracies but … other countries – when we talk about production of vaccines or perhaps what we can do to … help them – they say … there are some things that the United States provide that are welcome," she said. "There are also things that we want the United States to stop exporting, and one of those things is disinformation."
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She added that those countries blame Facebook for sabotaging "the global effort to fight against the coronavirus."
The New York congresswoman also criticized the social media company for contributing to "social violence" and "accelerating large-scale, very dangerous and some would call genocidal activities in places like South Asia, etc., human rights abuses" and "hate" within the U.S.
iPhone user touching Facebook logo on iPhone screen to open the app. (iStock)
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Facebook paid a $5 billion fine to the FTC in July 2019 over its privacy and data practices following the Cambridge Analytica scandal that came after the 2016 U.S. presidential election. The FTC also opened an investigation into the company's antitrust practices in June 2019, and the Justice Department announced a month later that it would be conducting an antitrust review of the tech giant.
The social media platform has also faced probes into its anticompetitive behavior in Canada and Europe.
Meta did not immediately respond to FOX Business' request for comment.
FOX Business' Jake Gibson contributed to this report.