WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — The Florida attorney general and several other federal regulators have filed an antitrust lawsuit against social media giant Facebook, accusing the networking site of wiping out its competition.
Ashley Moody was the 48th state attorney general to join the suit.
"For nearly a decade, Facebook has used its dominance and its monopoly power to crush smaller rivals and snuff out the competition," New York Attorney General Letitia James said.
"They simply buy out the smaller firms and or they squash them," Alan Crowetz, a cybersecurity expert at InfoStream, Inc, said.
Crowetz said he is not surprised to see the government wanting to regulate the tech giant from becoming an even bigger monopoly.
"It's in their best interest to cooperate because if they don't, then the government starts pushing back, they could lose more and more control," Crowetz said.
In the suit, plaintiffs are asking the court to require Facebook to give notice of any acquisition in excess of $10 million dollars.
It also calls for What's App and Instagram, both owned by Facebook, to be separated from the company.
"It's really critical that, again, we block this predatory acquisition of companies and that we restore competence to the market," James said.
In its defense, Facebook said that the Federal Trade Commission has already cleared its acquisitions and that the government now wants a do-over with no regard for the impact precedent would have on the business community and its 2.7 billion users.