“Typically, you separate great brands to create enterprise value,” says Scott Galloway, a Professor of Marketing at NYU Stern School of Business. “Mark Zuckerberg is trying to encrypt the backbone between WhatsApp, Instagram, and the core platform Facebook, such that he has one communications network across 2.7 billion people or the population of the southern hemisphere plus India.  What could go wrong? I actually, and I’ve said this before, I think Mark Zuckerberg is the most dangerous person in the world.”

Scott Galloway, a well-known and popular Professor of Marketing at NYU Stern School of Business, discusses Facebook’s possible implementation of a single communions platform for all of its apps utilized by 2.7 billion people. Galloway was interviewed on Bloomberg Technology.

Connecting Whatsapp, Instagram, and Facebook – What Could Go Wrong?

What we have here is the mother of all conjoining of triplets (referring Facebook’s plan to use the same messaging backend on all of its platforms). That is, typically, you separate great brands to create enterprise value. Mark Zuckerberg is trying to encrypt the backbone between WhatsApp, Instagram, and the core platform Facebook, such that he has one communications network across 2.7 billion people or the population of the southern hemisphere plus India. What could go wrong? 

I actually, and I’ve said this before, I think Mark Zuckerberg is the most dangerous person in the world. If you look at key moments in our history where we moved to tyranny, one of the key steps is someone consolidates the media. The notion that we’re going to have one individual deciding the algorithms for an encrypted backbone of 2.7 billion people is frightening, regardless of that person’s intentions or not. They’re even talking about putting the Facebook brand on each of these. 

Is This a Prophylactic Move Against Antitrust Action?

I think what Mark Zuckerberg is doing is taking prophylactic moves against any sort of antitrust such that he could say, “It’d be impossible to unwind us now.” This is absolutely bad for the planet and bad for society. It’s clear where they’re going, an encrypted backbone, conjoin the triplets, and claim that if you do anything you’re going to kill all of us. 

Typically antitrust plays out over the course of years or even decades. The idea to try and conjoin the companies as quickly as possible, such that they can make a nationalist argument, and they’re making it now. They are arguing that the Chinese are coming for us with their AI weaponized companies and you need a big company (to combat them). In fact, we’re the only ones that can do a stable currency coin. 

They’re going to try and make the same argument around encrypting the backbone. The fact is the FTC and the DOJ, as they’ve shown at least stomach some for, should go on background and say, “This is not going to prevent us from splitting you up, so be careful.” There has never been a greater failure in FTC or DOJ history them approving the acquisition of Instagram. I think we all probably regret that now.