A New FTC Task Force Could Be Coming for Tech Monopolies

 The Federal Trade Commission announced yesterday that it will launch a task force to monitor the tech industry for anticompetitive activity.

Part of that responsibility includes reviewing industry mergers -- both those slated to take place, as well as those that have already been completed.

But as a task force forms that's designed to get answers -- especially those pertaining to the practices and potential monopolistic activity -- many are left with even more questions.

Here's a look at some of them.

It's Called "Big Tech" for a Reason

"Big Tech" is a term coined for the biggest global tech companies, which typically includes Google, Amazon, Facebook, and Apple.

The name is meant to embody the net worth, multinational reach, and general power of each company -- which often includes the number of companies it has acquired, or the degree to which they can influence day-to-day life.

Arguments have been made, however, that the "big" nature of these Tech Giants -- another term commonly used to refer to them -- teeters on the edge of monopolistic practices, and that they perhaps exercise too much control. As Scott Galloway, an NYU Stern professor once put it, "These companies avoid taxes, invade privacy and destroy jobs to increase profits because ... they can."

The behavior and practices of these companies have been particularly salient over the past year, especially since it was revealed last spring that vote profiling firm Cambridge Analytica had improperly obtained and abused personally identifiable user data.

The event resulted in multiple hearings, including those where Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg testified before two U.S. congressional committees, as well as one before members of European Parliament -- where he was questioned about the company's potential monopoly over social media.

Facebook CEO Zuckerberg listens to opening remarks from House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman on April 11, 2018. | Amanda Zantal-Wiener

At one point during that last round of questioning, People's Party chair and MEP Manfred Weber asked if Facebook's portfolio of companies -- including WhatsApp, Instagram, and Messenger -- should be broken up into separate entities. At the time, a six-figure digital ad campaign called "Freedom from Facebook" launched  in the U.S. in an efforts to convince the FTC to do just that.

Now, as this new FTC task force forms and many of these outstanding questions arise once again, all eyes seem to be on the Tech Giants, and on Facebook, in particular.

And while Zuckerberg has repeatedly insisted that Facebook does, in fact, have competition -- citing a statistic that the average online user has eight core apps to communicate with personal networks -- the math doesn't exactly add up, and many of these alleged competitors, like Instagram and WhatsApp, are actually owned by Facebook.

This phenomenon provides only a sliver of a look into what the FTC task force is responsible for investigating -- and the dilemmas it could be assigned with resolving.

Will There Be Regulation?

Although many view the formation of the FTC task force as a crucial first step -- one that some say should have been taken long before now -- it's unclear exactly what, if any, executive action the members of the task force can take. 

For instance, as others who cover the tech industry has noted, the term "task force" doesn't exactly imply regulatory action, and more often suggests a team of experts assigned to exploration and investigation. And while the official announcement of the group's formation has said that the task force will "tak[e] enforcement actions when warranted," it doesn't specify what those action items might be.

Zuckerberg, for his part, has previously stated that he's "not opposed to regulation," other statements made in the past have suggested he's not eager for it to become a reality -- telling one elected official during last year's congressional hearings that "things that need to be thought through very carefully [before] we think about what [policies] to put in place."