Elizabeth Warren Says Facebook Poses a ‘Political Risk to the Survival of Democracy’: They’re ‘Playing Footsie With Dictators’
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) reiterated her call for Facebook to be broken up and ripped the company for posing a risk to democracy’s survival.
Appearing on The Beat with Ari Melber on Tuesday, Warren was asked about Big Tech accountability. Melber noted that Facebook rakes in billions in profits while paying just a 13% corporate tax rate.
“We’ve covered that the Biden administration’s agencies are going a little harder [on Big Tech] on that than before,” said the host. “Some of the nominees seem a little stronger, at least more skeptical. But what’s your view of what direction we’re going and what more should Congress and the federal government do, if anything, to hold Big Tech accountable right now?”
Warren responded by saying, “The only way we’re going to hold them accountable is to break them up. And I understand there are people who say, “Well, maybe we could regulate them a little better and we could put more cops on the beat. Look, I’m not opposed to that. It’s just not enough to get the job done.”
She suggested that by breaking Facebook up into multiple companies, those entities would be incentivized to provide users with a less intrusive experience. “The consequence of that is to make the market work better,” she said.
The senate also characterized Facebook as a threat to democracy:
The second consequence is to deprive Facebook of the kind of enormous power that it now has. Think what it means that Facebook is scooping in information from every one of our exchanges, scooping it in and using it for its own benefit, for advertising, for selling to third parties. Shoot, for playing footsie with dictators around the world. We need to break that up. I go back to Teddy Roosevelt who said the reason you break up these big monopolies is partly for economic reasons, create competition. But it’s partly because they pose a real political risk to the survival of a democracy. It is time to break up Facebook.
Watch above via MSNBC.
