https://www.barrons.com/articles/congress-asked-facebook-to-turn-over-a-trove-of-emails-51568825236
Congress Asked Facebook to Turn Over a Trove of Emails. Here's What It's Looking For.
Photograph by Alex Haney
A key focus of the House Judiciary Committee's request for a huge range of documents from Facebook is if the social media giant used the data it had collected from users to undermine its rivals, according to Evercore.
The firm's Kevin Rippey came to that conclusion after a close examination of the committee's letter requesting communications from CEO Mark Zuckerberg and other executives at the company, he wrote in a Tuesday note to clients.
So far, Facebook stock (ticker: FB) has shrugged of the inquiry. Facebook shares were down 0.3% on Wednesday. The committee also sent requests for executives' communications directly to the chief executives at Apple (AAPL), Amazon.com (AMZN) and Google's parent company Alphabet (GOOG) as part of its antitrust investigation.
"A major focus is obtaining [Facebook's]s internal communications regarding the acquisition of WhatsApp and Instagram, with a particular focus on discussions of possible strategic value and related antitrust risk," Rippey wrote. And that's perhaps the most obvious and well-covered aspect of the investigation: whether those major deals, which were crucial in turning Facebook from a company with effectively a single product into the internet conglomerate that it is today, were motivated by desire to blunt competition through acquisition.
At the time of these acquisitions, Facebook said the deals worked toward the company's social media missions. Instagram, for instance, allowed users to share photos based on interests, rather than just family and friends, while buying WhatsApp aimed to "accelerate growth and user engagement across both companies."
Facebook didn't immediately respond to a request for comment Wednesday.
The House also asked for information regarding Facebook's 2013 acquisition of the virtual private network (VPN) Onavo. VPNs allow users to create what are effectively private connections over public networks. The committee wants to know what data Facebook collected about users' mobile phone usage from Onavo.
Onavo monitored the amount of data being sent from apps on users' phones, and for most companies, that data wouldn't have much value. But for Facebook, it could have provided "deep insights into users' activity off of Facebook's [owned and operated] apps," Rippey said.
"The data gleaned from this app gave [Facebook] huge swaths of intelligence regarding users' mobile behavior, including engagement on competitors' apps," Rippey pointed out. "This data is alleged to have given [Facebook] an edge in responding to fast growing rivals with similar look-a-like products."