Where do you stand on Breaking Up the Big Tech?

I don’t even remember when I opened my social media accounts on platforms like Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, and others. These platforms are so attractive and addictive. I remember that when I came back home from school, I used to check all of my notifications, and spent a lot of time on these platforms every single day. I believe since I enjoy communicating with people, these mediums appeared as interesting spaces to spend time. However, sometimes I felt like I was too involved with social media and, especially Facebook. I decided to decrease my daily involvement with Facebook as it was affecting my normal life.

Now after years of users like me sharing their lives on Facebook, the social media platform started by Mark Zuckerberg is one of the biggest tech companies in the world that many people aim to break up. Although some critics like Bill Gates, Andrew Yang, and Max Levchin might argue that it is not a good idea to Break up Facebook, Amazon, and Google, I agree with Elizabeth Warren to break up the big tech. I think this argument is relevant from an investor’s point of view. That makes sense to hear that investors and specifically those who are CEOs of software companies, would advocate against breaking up the big tech. However, I would like to put myself in consumer’s shoes.

I believe the big tech companies have too much power these days. For example, as Facebook owns WhatsApp and Instagram, it has a lot of control over the consumer’s information. The company is able to even change the data in all these three platforms as there is one owner who has access to all data. However, if we end up with smaller competitors instead of one big guy, the power will split between a couple of people and each of them can have their own strategies to run their business.

I am also thinking about two other sides of this idea. Covering a variety of approaches would be more diversified and democratized than one big platform. Each of these new programs can pursue a specific niche. So, society will end up with a high quality of content in each individual platform. In addition, the companies would have a better competitive advantage in attracting consumers.

Last but not least, we should think about the economic consequences. For example, the economy will have more jobs available in the market as each of the small techs would need to hire employees after executing this idea. Especially, in this time of our life with the Covid pandemic and many still being unemployed.

What do you think? Do you like having fewer big tech firms or multiple smaller ones?