The US Federal Trade Commission and 46 of 50 states are suing Facebook on the grounds it operates a harmful monopoly.

The lawsuit has been in development for over a year and is promisingly bold, specifically calling for Facebook’s empire (which includes Instagram and WhatsApp) to be broken up. It has also been called extremely tech-literate by experts, in an encouraging rebuff to the sceptics that sometimes question the state’s ability to grapple with these questions.

The case rests on the argument that Facebook’s monopolistic dominance of social media (they have boasted that 90% of all social media usage takes place on one of their platforms) has allowed the company to erode privacy protections that were once relatively robust.

This is a vindication of what privacy groups and civil society have been saying for years!

Yet we know that these cases can take very long and that Facebook will throw everything at the defence. Now the job for people that want to see a fair and democratic society in the digital age is to keep making noise and to pressure lawmakers in other countries to follow the USA’s lead.