Break up Facebook

Even one of Facebook’s founders is now calling for the breakup of Facebook:

The government must hold Mark accountable. For too long, lawmakers have marveled at Facebook’s explosive growth and overlooked their responsibility to ensure that Americans are protected and markets are competitive. Any day now, the Federal Trade Commission is expected to impose a $5 billion fine on the company, but that is not enough; nor is Facebook’s offer to appoint some kind of privacy czar. After Mark’s congressional testimony last year, there should have been calls for him to truly reckon with his mistakes. Instead the legislators who questioned him were derided as too old and out of touch to understand how tech works. That’s the impression Mark wanted Americans to have, because it means little will change.

We are a nation with a tradition of reining in monopolies, no matter how well intentioned the leaders of these companies may be. Mark’s power is unprecedented and un-American.

It is time to break up Facebook.

The easiest way to check the power of the corpocracy is simply to punish juridical persons as the actual persons under law that they legally are. If the corporation commits a crime, the corporation goes to jail. No natural person is permitted to engage in normal business operations when in jail, neither should juridical persons be allowed to do so.

But in the absence of this eminently sensible system, breaking up Facebook would be a reasonable thing for the Trump administration to do.