On Friday, Senator Elizabeth Warren called for the breakup of tech giants like Amazon, Google and Facebook.
She's recommending the US bans companies from owning a platform and any sellers on it.
And then over the weekend she added Apple to the mix in an interview at South by Southwest.
This looks to be the cornerstone of her presidential run.
What do you make of it?
Is this just sort of like a vague promise to get attention?
Or do you think there's some actual fire behind this?
I don't think this is a vague promise.
I mean you know if you take a look at it, this is something that lawmakers have been considering for awhile now everytime Facebook.
Was at a congressional hearing, they would ask them is Facebook a monopoly?
Right.
Facebook would often reply well, no, because the average person has eight apps on their phones and Facebook is only one of those apps.
Right and they're not [CROSSTALK] Not to mention that Instagram and WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger are among those top eight apps.
Yep.
But if you think about that, I mean look at Google with, obviously Google itself, and then their ownership of YouTube-
Yep.
Gmail.
Android, the Android.
Yeah.
Yep.
All these major services, and that is something that lawmakers have been taking much more scrutiny Right.
Toward the FTC recently announced that they would have this new bureau that would be looking at tech mergers even retroactively.
So they could potentially take action on Facebook and Instagram.
Interesting.
But do you think though how realistic is it to break up these companies.
You've already got the counterargument of course is these companies are all competing.
Asked each other if we're ready.
There's competition, and that's driving, I guess, innovation and driving theories and how they operate.
Plus, how detrimental effect would this be on the U.S. if we broke up our biggest companies?
Yeah, there's definitely a lot of push-back on this.
Some folks have made the arguement that, you know, by doing this you're weekening American tech companies
Right.
And allowing.
Foreign tech companies like Huawei,
Right.
To basically proliferate based off of this, but I think that recent data scandals, recent private privacy issues have really brought people's attention to this, because if you don't wantna use like facebook,
Mm-hm.
But you still wanna keep in touch with their friends, what options do you have?
You have Instagram,
Right.
[LAUGH] Whatapps, I mean there is Twitter, but,
I use [UNKNOWN]
Yeah Yeah, signal.
But you're right, you're right.
In terms of the major services, we do have fairly limited options, and those limited options tend to be all owned by the same people.
Yeah, and that might become even more limited, wtih Mark Zuckerberg's plan last Wednesday, where he detailed his idea of combining Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram messengers.
