Should Facebook Be Broken Up?

The Daily

The New York Times

Daily News, News

4.4 • 102.8K Ratings

🗓️ 17 December 2020

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This episode contains strong language. When the photo-sharing app Instagram started to grow in popularity in the 2010s, the chief executive of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, had two options: build something comparable or buy it out. He opted for the latter. The subsequent $1 billion deal is central to a case being brought against Facebook by the federal government and 48 attorneys general. They want to see the social network broken up. Will they succeed? On today’s episode, we look at one of the biggest cases to hit Silicon Valley in decades. Guest: Mike Isaac, a technology correspondent for The New York Times. For an exclusive look at how the biggest stories on our show come together, subscribe to our newsletter. You can read the latest edition here. Background reading: Regulators have accused Facebook of buying up rising rivals to cement its dominance over social media.The cases against Facebook are far from a slam dunk — the standards of proof are formidable. For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily

Transcript

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0:25.6	From New York Times, I'm Michael Babaro.
0:32.6	This is The Daily.
0:41.1	The federal government and 48 attorneys general are seeking to break up Facebook, saying
0:47.6	that it's become an unlawful monopoly that is hurting consumers.
0:52.6	But today, my colleague, Mike Isaac, takes us inside one of the deals at the center of
1:00.3	that claim.
1:03.5	It's Thursday, December 17th.
1:08.3	Mike, where does the story of Facebook and Instagram begin?
1:13.0	I think you have to go back to 2010, which, you know, for us now seems like a bygone
1:20.8	era of the internet, basically.
1:23.0	But if you can remember, this was back when we were all using Facebook, you know, on
1:28.6	our desktop computers.
1:29.6	It was more relic of, I sit down and look in my desktop, maybe not even a laptop, and
1:36.2	I post photos or status updates to my Facebook there.
1:39.6	So very different era, very different Facebook.
	...

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