Facebook is too big
If anyone had doubts about the power of Facebook Inc. over the daily life of half the planet, on October 4, he had his answer.
For six hours, all the services of the company that owns Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram (three of the four largest social networks in the world), based in California, were down due to a technical failure.
The three networks disappeared from the internet for their 3.5 billion users, almost half of humanity.
The blackout was suffered by everyone, from the casual user to the remote work teams communicating by WhatsApp or businesses whose only showcase is Facebook or Instagram. The company reported that it was an error, possibly human, during a maintenance.
In a display of lack of transparency inconceivable in any other industry, and more so in listed companies, the public does not yet have a detailed account of how the failure occurred, or if it could happen again.
The situation forces a reflection on the de facto monopoly on the internet, and therefore the economy, exercised by a handful of Californian companies, and how the daily life of half humanity has become dependent on the decisions they make.
Facebook dominates interpersonal communications. Amazon dominates e-commerce. Google dominates access to information. None can fall for six hours without serious consequences. Our life and our economy are no longer understood without the internet connection. But the internet has not been an open space for a long time: interacting with the internet means, increasingly, interacting with these companies.
The very concept of monopoly is being reinvented by companies that measure their customers in the hundreds of millions. In some Asian countries, Facebook is the internet.
The US Congress published a report in 2020 in which it claimed that Google, Facebook, Apple and Amazon have “monopoly power”, that is, they have the power to curb any new competition on their playing field. In the case of Facebook, that quasi-monopoly is also about conversation.
The latest revelations show how the only priority of the company is the growth in hours of use, and to this their contents. In the regulation of that market, not only the economy is at stake, but democracy. The report was the preliminary step in a proposal to break up these companies and make them smaller.
Facebook’s blackout reveals the urgency of moving forward in this regard. But partitioning may not be the best option, it may not be practical or realistic with the current level of concentration of a market that they have created themselves.
In any case, they are today economic actors essential to develop life as we know it, but they lack a regulation that banking, energy or transport experiences.
Philip Micallef, former Telecom Regulator MCA and Bermuda Regulatory Authority – Attard
Remembering HMS Royal Oak
HMS Royal Oak departing Grand Harbour, Valletta, circa 1937.
HMS Royal Oak was one of five Revenge-class battleships, weighing 25,750 tons, armed with 15-inch guns and built for the Royal Navy at Devonport in 1914.
She first saw combat during the Battle of Jutland in 1916, but in peacetime she served in the Atlantic, at home and in the Mediterranean fleet.
Originally designed as a coal-burning ship in World War I, she was converted to oil with 75 fuel tanks.
During the beginning of World War II, she was moored in the northeast corner of Scapa Flow.
On the night of October 13-14, 1939, she was stalked by the German submarine U-47 under the command of Gunther Prien.
He managed to penetrate the barriers leading to the ship and attacked the vessel with a salvo of four torpedoes.
HMS Royal Oak foundered in 13 minutes, and 835 seamen, including 10 Maltese, lost their lives.
Alfred Conti Borda – Mosta
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