Forced break-up of Facebook would be a remedy of the very last resort, says EU antitrust chief

A forced break-up of Facebook should be a remedy only of the very last resort as it would almost certainly involve a long legal battle, EU Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager said on Friday.

Vestager was responding to reporters' questions about Facebook at the VivaTech technology conference in Paris.

However, Vestager believes that a forced break-up of the social media giant would likely result in years of legal battles, and a better way to regulate the company would be by demanding access to its important data.

"Of course it would be a remedy of very last resort. I think it would keep us in court for maybe a decade. It is much more direct and maybe much more powerful to say we need access to data," Vestager said.

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She believes that "access to data" would not only help avoid its misuse by technology giants, but would also enable competitors to emerge.

She added that such access to tech giants' data is needed to encourage innovations in areas such as artificial intelligence and autonomous driving.

Vestager is a Danish politician serving as European Commissioner for Competition since 2014. She has earned a name for herself by taking on tech giants like Amazon, Google, and Apple. Her office recently imposed a fine of $1.7 billion on Google for alleged unfair practices in online advertising market. She also has all the authority to order a split-up of Facebook in the EU.

Such as has been the size of the fines on Google that in its last financial year it paid more in fines than in taxes.

Vestager's comments follow-on from recent suggestions by Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes and some prominent US Democratic politicians that the social media giant needs to be broken up by US regulatory agencies in order to reign in CEO Mark Zuckerberg's "staggering" power.

Hughes argued that Facebook is continuously acquiring potential rival firms and copying key features and technology of other networks, leaving users with no real alternative in the market.

According to Hughes, the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) made a big mistake allowing Facebook to acquire WhatsApp and Instagram, thereby helping it to expand its user base worldwide.

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