The case for treating Facebook as a 'hostile foreign power'

Mark Zuckerberg.
(Image credit: Johannes Simon/Getty Images)

While many of Facebook's critics are pushing for antitrust regulation to rein in the tech giant, The Atlantic's Adrienne LaFrance thinks dealing with the company also "requires a civil-defense strategy." In other words, she believes Facebook deserves to be treated like a "hostile foreign power."

LaFrance argues that Facebook effectively fits the bill as a digital nation-state, considering that it has nearly 3 billion users (more than the populations of India and China) combined, its own form of governing philosophy, and is developing its own blockchain-based payment system. And, when viewing the company as a nation-state, it's difficult to ignore "its single-minded focus on its own expansion; it's immunity to any sense of civic obligation; its record of facilitating the undermining of elections; its antipathy toward the free press; its rulers' callousness and hubris; and its indifference to the endurance of American democracy," LaFrance writes, adding that it also utilizes unethical surveillance and data-gathering strategies. "If Russia or China were taking the exact same actions to undermine democracy, Americans would surely feel differently," she contines.

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Tim O'Donnell

Tim is a staff writer at The Week and has contributed to Bedford and Bowery and The New York Transatlantic. He is a graduate of Occidental College and NYU's journalism school. Tim enjoys writing about baseball, Europe, and extinct megafauna. He lives in New York City.