Facebook’s Legal Troubles Multiplying

tech companies that had data sharing agreements with Facebook. That's according to The New York Times. Joining us as Garrett de Vinc Bloomberg News technology reporter to talk about all things Facebook. First of all, Garrett, what do you know about the Justice Department's investigation. It's out of the Eastern District.

What they're looking at is, you know, there's been all these stories written the past year or two about Facebook and how it was using our data, right, and so there has been some reporting that Facebook struck deals with other companies, so these would be handset manufacturers in some case, um certain banks. They had to deal with Spotify as well, So that if you were using, you know, one of these companies products, you could sort of integrate it with

Facebook Messenger and chat with your friends. Now, the question that is being investigated is whether those things violated some promises that Facebook had made to the U S Government about how it would share user data, and also whether they were telling users that there may be sometimes private messages, private information would be seen by other companies that they

didn't know. We're going to be looking at that. Every time this comes up, flashing through my mind is well, there's aleven consent degree that Facebook has and it's based on privacy. Are there other organizations that are investigating Facebook in the US? Yeah, I mean, so that's the the FTC consent degree, which is sort of what I what I was referencing about that promise that they made about

how they were gonna use and share data. I think a lot of people in the US, at the regular a level, at the political level, are interested in going after Facebook. It's a big news story. It's something that is gaining some traction with consumers. Even at the end of the day, most people still really you know, like the products are at least use them. Maybe maybe we're

addicted to them. Some of us. But I think that at the end of the day, you know this as a political story, and it's something for regulators and politicians who want to take a stand on something. It is something that they will keep beating the drum on. And it seems that every day they have something new to beat the drum on. And Facebook again being criticized for live streaming of that shooting in New Zealand. Tell us about that. Yeah, so, I mean Facebook has allowed live

streaming for a couple of years now. Obviously they're not the only platform. You can do it on Twitter, you can do it on YouTube, you can do it on on a host of different apps for it. And it's a really tricky problem, right because Facebook and the other technology companies they want to do live streaming for them. It gets people more engaged. People are more likely to comment on live videos than they are on static ones.

But at the same time, you will have incidence like this where someone live streams a crime, where someone live streams content that otherwise would not be allowed on the platform, and because it's live, there's no way to monitor it using the technology that is usually monitored to sort of take down or block videos that otherwise would break the rules. Let's talk a little bit about Mark Zuckerberg's recent thoughts, very very long thoughts, about lengthy thoughts about pivoting to privacy.

Do you see anything substantial coming out of that. Yeah, I think anything that Mark Zuckerberg says you have to take substantially. I mean it's sort of, you know, interesting to kind of watch all his comments and see what they actually mean and then look back a year later and see whether things have changed or not. I'm pretty skeptical of that word pivot, which I think has been thrown around a lot when it comes to his recent announcement.

Facebook is not going to get rid of its public platforms. It's not going to get rid of the core apps where you know, I post a photo of my children or whatnot and can share it publicly or share it

with my friends. But they do realize that, you know, a huge part of communication and social networking is becoming private and is becoming encrypted, and with their What's App application, which is, if not the most popular messaging tool in the world, definitely one of the top couple is um you know, already encrypted, and so they're really leaning into that side of the business as an area future growth.

They've lost one of their top executives. Yeah, so Chris Cox resigned, And the way that Facebook was talking about it is that, you know, he was someone who kind of a couple of years ago, was already looking at other alternatives. He'd been at Facebook pretty much since the very beginning, and then because of all these these complications they've had with privacy, with regulation and having to deal with that, he stayed on. You know, you can kind

of probably take that with a grain of salt. Some people could say that he's leaving because of the last couple of years of complications, And at the end of the day, I think that's probably why the stock is down, you know, cynically, it's probably not because of the live streaming and because of the New Zealand shooting. It's probably because someone who is very close within Mark Zuckerberg's inner circle.

I think, after Zuckerberg and Charles Soundberg, he would be one of the top people has now left the company. You cover tech. So is there any real fear on the part of Facebook, Google, or Apple about Elizabeth Warren's calls to break them up if she becomes president, and frankly, the calls of other people who see them as just too big. It's a really interesting story that that we've been tracking very closely. We will continue to track. I

have no idea where this is going to go. How serious in the United States, These calls for very very strict antitrust regulations, just changes in how we think about anti trust in the United States are actually gonna happen.

But this is a movement I would say that has been brewing for a couple of years, and it started, you know, with some progressive policy think tank kind of people saying, you know, we really need to rethink how this is going, and it has filtered into the political mainstream, you know, most strikingly now with Elizabeth Warren very clearly stating I will break up the company's I will do

it this way. I will separate Instagram from Facebook. And she's sort of stating this in a way that you know, although other politicians have talked about the need for stricter antitrust rules, they haven't gone as far as to say explicitly what they want to do. And so, you know, she is a long way off from the presidency. She has a grueling primary to get through, and then of course to you know, whoever does win that that democratic promimly has to defeat Donald Trump. But I'm sure it

will be a topic of debate during Democratic primary pleasure. Garrett, that's so nice to have you. That's Garrett Davinky is the Bloomberg News technology reporter. Thanks for listening to the Bloomberg Law Podcast. You can subscribe and listen to the show on Apple Podcasts, SoundCloud, and on bloomberg dot com slash podcast. I'm June Brasso. This is Bloomberg