Legal cases mount vs. tech giants
Australian officials have already put pressure on digital tech giants including Facebook and Google through draft legislation that they should pay for content from news outlets that they share.
Australia’s information commissioner started to file legal cases against Facebook last March for allegedly exposing citizens to a data breach by Cambridge Analytica, a now-defunct British political consulting firm.
On December 9, The U.S. Federal Trade Commission and attorneys general for 46 U.S. states and a coalition of the attorneys general of 46 states, the District of Columbia, and Guam, filed lawsuits against Facebook, accusing it of maintaining a monopoly.
The Commission and the multistate coalition led by New York Attorney General Letitia James worked together in the years-long investigation into Facebook to determine whether it engaged in anticompetitive business practices.
Based on the results of the probe, the FTC and the multistate coalition determined that the social network giant violated antitrust laws.
The multistate coalition’s complaint also alleged that Facebook engaged in predatory practices to maintain its monopoly.
The social network giant allegedly “illegally acquired competitors and cut services to smaller threats. As a result, it lessened users from the benefits of competition and privacy protections.
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