Jan 17, 2020

Four tech firms are suing Facebook in the US on competition grounds, and are demanding that CEO and chairman Mark Zuckerberg sell his majority stake in the social network. The four companies are online marketplace-cum-social network Cir.cl; identity verification firm Beehive Biometric; chat app Reveal Chat; and Lenddo, a financial service provider. Two of the four – Cir.cl and Beehive Biometric – are now defunct, while Reveal Chat was acquired by music streaming service Rhapsody in 2015 . In a federal lawsuit filed Thursday in San Francisco, the quartet accused Facebook of running "the most brazen, wilful anticompetitive scheme in a generation" throughout the 2010s. They further claimed that "the net effect of Facebook's anticompetitive scheme is one of the largest unlawful monopolies ever seen in the United States." The lawsuit concludes by demanding that Zuckerberg "divest himself of incontestable control over the company." In simpler language, this amounts to a request for Zuckerberg to sell his majority stake in Facebook. Zuckerberg controls around 60% of Facebook's voting shares and acts as both CEO and chairman, giving him near-universal control. The lawsuit references Facebook's ownership of the world's biggest social and messaging platforms, namely WhatsApp and Instagram. The four firms complained that Facebook's planned integration of these services "would increase the cost of switching to a rival social network" and might allow the surveillance of users. "The integration, if completed, will not only substantially lessen competition, it may allow Facebook to destroy it—for a very long time," the lawsuit states. The lawsuit builds on the increasingly loud argument that the big internet platforms deserve greater scrutiny for their ability to swallow up smaller competitors, and to move into adjacent areas. Facebook currently faces multiple regulatory probes on antitrust. In July of last year, the Federal Trade Commission launched a formal antitrust investigation into Facebook , while a bipartisan group of lawmakers on the House Judiciary Committee launched a similar probe in September.