Hello and welcome to the Intelligence on Economist Radio.

I'm your host, Jason Palmer.

Every weekday we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world.

In Cuba, noises from the Movimiento San Isidro are growing louder.

The Pro-Democracy movement started with scholars and artists.

Now that it's absorbing other protest groups with other agendas, there seems to be a glimmer of hope for change.

And given that Europe's ski resorts were so central to the spread of the coronavirus earlier in the year,

you'd think a coordinated decision to shut them this season would be uncontroversial.

The fact that it isn't tells you a lot about European cooperation.

But first...

No company. No company should have this much unchecked power over our personal information and our social interactions.

American authorities push back against big tech firms sharpened yesterday with two lawsuits against Facebook.

One filed by the Federal Trade Commission and another by the attorneys general of 48 states and territories.

Attorney General Leticia James of New York, who led the state's investigation, called on the courts to halt the social media giants' anti-competitive conduct.

Today we are sending a clear and a strong message to Facebook and every other company that any efforts to stifle competition and hurt small businesses,

reduce innovation and creativity, or cut privacy protections, will be met with the full force of our offices.

The Federal Trade Commission said Facebook's purchases of WhatsApp and Instagram had stifled competition and that it would push to make the company sell them off again.

Facebook isn't the only object of regulatory scrutiny. In October, America's Justice Department filed a sweeping antitrust suit against Google.

There's a growing consensus in America that the tech giants are just too giant.

But in trenching in law, what is fair for consumers and competitors will be no easy task.

The lawsuit to ledge that Facebook has behaved in an anti-competitive manner.

Paul Hodson is the economist's technology correspondent.

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