announcing the deal. In 2014, when Facebook was trying to buy WhatsApp for $19 billion, the company told the FTC, "WhatsApp will operate as a separate company and will honor its commitments to privacy and security." But last year, Facebook revealed itsDigging through past mergers would require a lot of work, and Cicilline said if the government expects "to reinvigorate antitrust enforcement in this country, then we need to be prepared to invest resources to do it.
Members of both parties want to "protect innovation and give new entrepreneurs that are starting up an ability to compete and survive this kind of environment where there is such a huge dominant platform sometimes that controls their access to the market," Cicilline said.Some Republicans, for example, have, a claim many Democrats dismiss. And Democrats may be more willing to impose broader regulations on the industry while Republicans tend to favor a more narrowly defined approach.
"I admit that it's easy to diagnose the problem, developing the solutions to respond to it that will be effective will be much more difficult," Cicilline said. He's also keeping tabs on the states' relationship with the DOJ, which has been somewhat fraught as a group of Democratic state attorneys general have