Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg plans to use a hearing in Congress on Wednesday on the issue of tech monopolies to defend how big his social media company has become.
Zuckerberg will tell a subcommittee of the House Judiciary that popular apps Instagram and WhatsApp are better under the corporate umbrella of Facebook, despite calls for the government to break the social giant, according to a copy of the testimony prepared by Zuckerberg. released by the company on the eve of the hearing.
“Facebook has made Instagram and WhatsApp successful as part of our app family,” said Zuckerberg in the prepared testimony.
“Instagram and WhatsApp have been able to grow and operate their services using Facebook’s lowest-cost, custom infrastructure and address spam and harmful content with Facebook’s integrity teams and technology.”
The Instagram and WhatsApp issue is important because analysts and lawmakers, including Senator Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., Have called for Facebook to be required to sell those apps. They have asked if it is a good idea that three of the world’s most popular applications for social media and communication are owned by the same corporation.
Zuckerberg is one of the top four technology CEOs slated to testify Wednesday before a House of Representatives antitrust subcommittee that is examining its power in the market. President David Cilline, DR.I., has been researching the tech industry for more than a year and is preparing a report on possible anti-competitive practices.
In his own testimony prepared for the hearing, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos defended his company’s practices, including its wages and benefits, and said that in business, large size is sometimes necessary.
“I love garage entrepreneurs, I was one. But just as the world needs small businesses, it also needs big ones, “said Bezos.” There are things that small businesses simply cannot do. I don’t care how good an entrepreneur you are, you’re not going to build a full-fiber Boeing 787 in your garage. “
Bezos said Amazon now directly employs 1 million people.
The other two CEOs slated to testify, Apple’s Tim Cook and Google’s Sundar Pichai, have yet to release their prepared testimony.
Zuckerberg’s five comment pages also mention China, arguing that America’s top tech companies share values such as democracy and free expression that the Chinese version of the Internet does not share.
Facebook bought Instagram for $ 1 billion in 2012 in a deal that has since been viewed as a bargain, as Instagram has skyrocketed in cultural relevance and profitability. Facebook bought WhatsApp for $ 22 billion in 2014.
Zuckerberg said the bottom line of the three apps together is better services for users and advertisers.
Ezra Kaplan contributed
