We do have an oligopoly of five giant tech companies. But I think all of the sins of Facebook and all of the controversy around Facebook is really mostly particular to Facebook. And I just think Facebook is the most poorly run of these big platform companies. A long time ago, I was very close to Steve Jobs and Bill Gates. They both were happy to be bazillionaires. They both were megalomaniacs, in certain ways. They could be very unpleasant, but they had some principles. They had a red line. In my encounters with Mark Zuckerberg, I’ve never been able to discover any principles.
Tech journalist Walt Mossberg in conversation with Kara Swisher at the New York Times.
Mark Zuckerberg does not have any discernible principles. He occasionally utters some meaningless pablum about “bringing people together” but what sort of people did he bring together? Maybe Putin hackers and Trumpist trolls.
Zuck may not have any principles – but he does have plenty of information about you which you voluntarily handed over to him.
It’s time to break up tech monopolies – starting with Facebook.