Facebook is not a monopoly

The social network is huge, globe-spanning even, but it hasn’t cornered the market on social media

Of all the exchanges between Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and U.S. Senators during Tuesday’s Capitol Hill hearing on Facebook’s mishandling of users’ data, this was one of my favorite.

Senator Lindsay Graham was making a case for how Facebook’s dominance in its field might be considered monopolistic. “You don’t think you have a monopoly?” Senator Graham asked Zuckerberg.

Zuckerberg shot back, “Certainly doesn’t feel like it to me,” which elicited one of the few laughs during the nearly seven hours of testimony.

It would not be the first time Senators would raise the specter of “monopoly” or the last time Zuckerberg would explain all the social media options that exist outside of Facebook.

For me, though, the answer is obvious. I’ve seen monopolies. I know how monopolies work and, Facebook, you are no monopoly.

It’s not like the Senators, many of whom have been in Congress for decades, don’t know this. One even noted how he hadn’t seen a tech hearing like this since the days of Microsoft when, yes, Congress was peppering then CEO Bill Gates with questions about the apparent software monopoly.