The U.S. House of Representatives Antitrust Subcommittee will soon release the findings of its investigation into Facebook and other tech companies. Based on its findings, the subcommittee is expected to urge Congress to weaken its power. The head of the subcommittee, David Cicilline, indicated that the body could recommend its division. This means that he would have to get rid of either Instagram or WhatsApp, which he bought in 2012 and 2014, or both in the future. But according to Facebook, a government-ordered forced split of the company would be very difficult and costly.
The largest social network claims this in a 14-page document obtained by The Wall Street Journal, which was prepared based on the work of lawyers from the law firm Sidley Austin LLP, and in which the company presents the arguments it wants to defend before the subcommittee.
Facebook has poured billions of dollars into the popular social platforms Instagram and WhatsApp since acquiring them. In recent years and months, they have been trying to integrate some aspects of them with their other products.
In its defense, the company wants to argue that untying the said platforms would be "extremely difficult" and would cost billions of dollars if it had to maintain completely separate systems. In addition, he believes that it would weaken security and have a negative effect on the user experience.
The subcommittee's conclusions should be published at the end of October. Let's add that on October 28, Congress invited the head of Facebook Mark Zuckerberg, Google Sundar Pichai and Twitter Jack Dorsey to the hearing.
