[jdblair]

Yes, the justice department and federal courts have domain experts who understand the nuances of the tech industry. You are conflating elected officials (Senators) and the staffers in the justice department who are experts in their fields.

The real danger is regulatory capture: the experts come from industry and will design regulations to favor the industry. The best remedy would be to break the companies into pieces rather than try to craft rules for how the behemoths should behave. For example, Instragram and Whatsapp can pretty obviously be split from Facebook. At Google, YouTube, mobile, search and even advertising could be split into separate companies.

[anticensor]

Instagram cannot be taken out (due to backwards horizontal integration), WhatsApp, maybe. The correct solution for FB is revoking its business license with a very short notice period.

[MaupitiBlue]

Right. Just like the FAA.