Privacy issues: Facebook Grew Too Big to Care: Shira Ovide

Two years ago, a Yale Law School student published what became an influential paper about how antitrust law should apply to one of America’s superstar technology companies, which don’t fit the conventional mold of Standard Oil monopolists.

Now, another academic paper from a former advertising technology executive and Yale law graduate is arguing that Facebook Inc. abuses its power. Titled in part “The Antitrust Case Against Facebook,” its author, Dina Srinivasan, offers a deeply researched analysis of Facebook’s pattern of backtracking on the user data collection that allowed the company to become a star. Once Facebook was powerful and popular, Srinivasan says, it was able to overrun objections about its data-harvesting practices.

The core of Srinivasan’s argument is to treat two anxieties about Facebook — potential abuses of monopoly power and violations of users’ privacy — not as separate but as two sides of the same coin. It’s a relatively novel idea that has echoes in a recent order