'The Wrath Of Mark': 4 Takeaways From The Government's Case Against Facebook
This week, the Federal Trade Commission and 48 attorneys general unveiled blockbuster lawsuits accusing Facebook of crushing competition and calling for the tech giant to be broken up.
The twin complaints together run to nearly 200 pages documenting how Facebook became so powerful — and how, according to the government, it broke the law along the way.
They accuse Facebook of, as the FTC puts it, "suppressing, neutralizing, and deterring serious competitive threats" to its own dominance in social media.
The company did so, the authorities allege, by swallowing some rivals — most notably photo-sharing app Instagram and messaging service WhatsApp — and suffocating others by cutting off valuable access to Facebook's data and systems.
Here are four key takeaways:
In Facebook's words: "It is better to buy than compete"
Both suits tell the story of Facebook's alleged misdeeds largely though the words of the company's own employees and executives, including CEO Mark Zuckerberg, thanks to troves of internal correspondence obtained by investigators.
