News mills have been churning with reports of Facebook being on the verge of integrating three of its messaging platforms, namely Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp and Instagram. However, the move might spell out heavy repercussions for the mother company as it’s expected to invoke added regulatory scrutiny. Facebook is already under a lot of fire legally.
On Friday, it was reported by New York Times that Facebook is looking to integrate the technical structure behind the three social messaging apps it controls. Although the apps are expected to function as standalone services, there are chances of them being inter-connected in the future. The news daily listed four people to be aware of the plans of the company.
According to CNBC, numerous anti-trust lawyers have opined that this new move from Facebook hardly warrants fresh antitrust action to be raised against the firm. However, public debate has quickly started gaining momentum. Speaking to Times, President of Electronic Privacy Information Center, Marc Rotenberg was of the opinion that the plans of Facebook are likely to spell out a bad outcome for netizens. On the other hand, Representative Ro Khanna voiced his concern on Twitter and questioned the very acquisition procedure of WhatsApp and Instagram.
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Ever since last year, Facebook has been in the eye of storm regarding privacy practices as well as its policies of privacy practices. The problems surfaced soon enough, amounting to Zuckerberg having to answer legislator’s questions on the topic of regulation in Washington.
Recently, it has been suggested by one Canadian representative that antitrust might offer a viable solution to the problems of Facebook. Currently, the company’s chain of apps witnesses greater than 2.5 billion users every month and is the worldwide leader in mobile traffic. According to a professor of law at University of Michigan, Daniel Crane, the integration of back-end nitty-gritties of technology should not be affect that issue.
