Modern economic theory, particularly in the United overseas chinese in canada data States, and even American competition law, consider that oligopolies are not necessarily bad on two conditions: that they innovate continuously; and that they can be challenged by new entrants in the markets in which they operate. The central question about the tech titans, to the extent that they apparently continue to innovate, is therefore the following: can new entrants challenge their power?
If the answer is negative, two approaches are then possible: either "break the titans" by separating their activities, or consider that data is a common good and force the titans to share their data with start-ups which can then offer alternative services.
Separation or sharing of activities?
The first approach, that of separation, would require, for example, Facebook to resell WhatsApp and Instagram by giving one WhatsApp share and one Instagram share to each owner of a Facebook share; or to separate Amazon's distribution from its cloud service - each Amazon shareholder receives one Distribution share and one Cloud share -; or to separate Google from Waze so that Google no longer collects data on our movements in addition to that collected on our Internet searches.
The second, that of sharing (of data), can concern raw data, or "meaningful data" - those which include the networks of relationships of data carriers - or even "data already processed by artificial intelligence". This sharing can take place through interfaces, which would lead to talking about "regulation by API" ( "application programming interface" ): everyone would have the right to their interface key for their data.
Encrypted, the content of messages exchanged on WhatsApp cannot, technically, be analyzed: these messages cannot be used to feed Facebook's advertising databases. The way WhatsApp works, where you cannot express yourself publicly (except in "statuses"), nor subscribe to personalities or interests (except in the case of WhatsApp groups, but which have many limitations ), offers little grist to the mill in terms of collecting personal data. The announcements of this January 16 show, in this context, that Facebook's quest for solutions to make its WhatsApp application profitable is still far from over.
Does this case mean WhatsApp is not secure?
In the absence of all the technical details that allowed Jeff Bezos' phone to be hacked, it is unclear whether the flaw used has been fixed today. In May 2019, WhatsApp announced that it had fixed a major security flaw affecting the management of audio calls, which had been exploited by NSO Group for hacks. Another flaw, which affected the sending of MP4 files, was fixed in late 2019. The company announced in October that it had filed a complaint against NSO Group .
