I've harbored a counterargument for a while against breaking up Google or Facebook: Both of these are effectively surveillance capitalist companies. Their prim

I've harbored a counterargument for a while against breaking up Google or Facebook: Both of these are effectively surveillance capitalist companies. Their primary business is spying on people and using that data to target them for ads and other forms of manipulation. When big bloated "Soviet bureau" corporations are broken apart the result is generally an explosion of innovation and growth in a sector. Do we really want an explosion of innovation and growth in that sector? Maybe it would be a good thing if the surveillance capitalist behemoths are allowed to continue to get stagnant and bloated. If and when an alternative paradigm for sustainable business on the Internet emerges it would make them easier to displace. Breaking up these companies would also vastly increase the surface area exposed via surveillance. Instead of two or three companies spying on us we'd suddenly have dozens of former divisions of these companies. Edit: lastly I must echo others in their lack of trust for this justice department. I think this is likely to be a political cudgel deployed to force these companies to stop filtering out or de-prioritizing extreme far right propaganda.