US Senator Sherrod Brown: Facebook is delusional

“Mark Zuckerberg said that Facebook is more like a government than a company. That’s delusional.” US Senator Sherrod Brown said in a video tweet by NowThis News.

The video was released a few hours after Facebook’s hearing with the Senate Banking Committee. In the video, Brown added “We have to protect our democracy. We should be making it harder, not easier to concentrate so much power in big corporations like big banks and big tech companies like Google and Facebook.”

Brown raised a serious concern on Facebook having an ability to force users to use their own product to create new monopoly money. He asked, “what happens when Facebook forces businesses to quit accepting your credit card or your debit card? You could be forced to use Facebook’s new monopoly money. What about small business owners, forced to use it, or lose access to Facebook’s millions of users?”

During the hearing on Facebook Libra, Brown remarked: “We’d be crazy to give them a chance to let them experiment with people’s bank accounts.” Senator Martha McSally shared the same sentiment with Brown. She said, “instead of cleaning up your house you are launching into a new business model.”

David Marcus, Head of Calibra emphasized the separation between social and financial data during the hearing. He said, “the way we’ve built this is to separate social and financial data because we’ve heard loud and clear that they don’t want those two types of data streams connected, so this is the way the system is designed.”

Marcus also stressed that Facebook is not aiming to compete with sovereign currencies. He added, “Facebook will only have one vote and will not be in a position to control the association, nor will Facebook or the Libra Association position themselves to compete with sovereign currencies or interfere with monetary policy.”