Editorial: When is Facebook deemed too big?

Studies have shown over half of people get news from social media.

Some years back the US Government threatened to break up Microsoft.

The tech giant had embedded its Internet Explorer web browser into its latest edition of Windows and pretty much stifled the competition.

Netscape was a casualty.

Because Microsoft was so dominant back then - 95 per cent of computers ran Windows - there was genuine concern the company had too much power.

Fast forward 20-ish years and one wonders how big Facebook will need to get before it faces a similar threat.

Latest studies suggest over half of people get their news from Facebook. News others produce.

This has sent not just old media but even new media scrambling for their calculators as their revenues plummet.

Unlike Google or YouTube, Facebook does not support its content providers with a cut of the billions of advertising dollars it earns off the back of content it does not pay for.
Pretty smart cookie that Mark Zuckerberg bloke.

But it's not just news Facebook is dominating.

Where the crowds are, advertisers follow. Where once you texted, more now use Facebook Messenger.

Facebook is set to eat YouTube as the number one video platform, too, and its livestreaming makes TV stations out of us all.

I'm not arguing old business models don't need a shake-up, but so many sectors are being supplanted by one single corporate that now knows more about you than your mother.

Apparently its artificial intelligence can now tell your political persuasion, sexuality, beliefs and more, simply based on what you click. You don't have to volunteer a single thing.

So when is it too big, too powerful, too all-knowing?

You be the judge.