Data scientist and Facebook whistleblower, Frances Haugen, joins ‘Influencers with Andy Serwer’ to discuss big tech regulation and how Meta stacks up against its Silicon Valley rivals.
Video Transcript
ANDY SERWER: What about the other FAANGs? I guess they’re not FAANGs, they’re MAANGs, because the F is the M. But the other big tech companies. The Googles, the Amazons, the Apples.
FRANCES HAUGEN: Yeah, totally.
ANDY SERWER: What should we do about them? Are they a problem as well?
FRANCES HAUGEN: Yeah. I think there are– so there’s this interesting challenge around network effects, right?
So, in the case of Google, as long as Google gets to– one of the Googles. Let’s say we broke up Google, so we’re gonna have multiple Googles. As long as we have– one of them gets to call themselves Google, it will just reclaim the market share of the other search engines that were broken up out of it.
You know, the difference when they, say, broke up AT&T was each region had a phone network, and you had– it took some time before you had competition, where, like, you could have one of the Baby Bells go into the same area as another Baby Bell.
The internet is so flat that I think you’ll just see reconvergence, where even if you broke up Google and Google clone, as long as you allow original, like, one of those to still call itself Google, people will just go back to using Google.
But in terms of– and so I think that’s where the importance of monitoring to make sure that they’re not abusing their monopoly power becomes really important. Like making sure they’re not locking in consumers unnecessarily, that they’re making sure their platforms have access.
In the case of things like Apple, I guess you could break up, like, the laptop division from the phone division. But I think there is– I think there’s more opportunities there around things like the App Store. I’m trying to think of what are the other places. I’ve never thought about this with them.
ANDY SERWER: I mean, do you, for instance, buy the fact that Apple suggests, vociferously even, that they’re a better actor than Facebook is?
FRANCES HAUGEN: Oh, yeah. You know, something that someone pointed and asked me recently was there aren’t Apple whistleblowers. You know, Facebook has a series of whistleblowers. Like, I am not the only whistleblower. There’s, like, a new one every two weeks. And I think part of the difference for that is the transparency of the companies.
So, for example, when Apple makes a device, within hours of that device going on shelves, people have literally posted YouTube videos where they’ve taken that phone apart and verified. They said they had this chip. Hey, they have this chip. They said they had this kind of accelerator. They have that accelerator.
And their inputs are transparent, right? You know, we have laws that say you have to say where are your supplies come from. People go and interview the laborers in the factories. And we can put out independent sensors for the pollution, and people do. People put out sensors around factories and say, you are– here’s the externalities of the thing you’re doing.
I think that makes Apple work in more responsible ways because they know people are watching.
