Facebook should be broken up, Silicon Valley Democrat says

Khanna said that there aren’t a lot of other robust social media platforms, and that having Instagram and WhatsApp as separate entities would help foster more competition. — AFP

California Democrat Ro Khanna wants Facebook Inc to unwind its acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp – two of its biggest deals in the past decade – as he called for more aggressive antitrust enforcement and privacy regulations.

“It seems to me we would be better off if they were multiple platforms,” Khanna, who represents part of Silicon Valley in Congress and sits on the House Oversight Committee, said in an interview with Bloomberg TV on Monday. “I don’t think that merger should have been approved in the first place,” he said, referring to Facebook’s takeover of Instagram.