Break up Facebook? There are smarter ways to rein in big tech.

In this anti-big tech moment, the slogan “break them up” is simple, catchy and has been adopted by some politicians and other observers to capture the emotion of the era. Unfortunately, “breaking up” large tech platforms is often not a good solution to the economic harms created by large firms in this sector. Washington cannot just break up big tech, or any company, solely because it is large or has a high market share. There are usually more effective ways to create competition.  Antitrust enforcers must determine whether, and exactly how, each tech platform violated US antitrust laws. An agency should analyze each platform individually and determine whether it acted in a way that was anticompetitive. Second, an agency must think carefully about the source of each platform’s market power and figure out what remedy — antitrust or otherwise — would create competition in that market. Third, and more generally, the government can go beyond antitrust and increase competition by establishing a more muscular regulator to level the playing field between incumbents and entrants. 

[Fiona Scott Morton is a professor of economics at the Yale University School of Management and a former deputy assistant attorney general in the Justice Department’s antitrust division.]