Attorney General TJ Donovan joined his peers from 46 other states Tuesday in an antitrust investigation of Facebook.
The New York-led investigation originally involved just seven additional states and Washington, D.C., when it was launched in September. Now, all but three states have gotten on board with the bipartisan inquiry.
“Facebook may have put consumer data at risk, reduced the quality of consumers’ choices, and increased the price of advertising,” said Attorney General Letitia James, D-N.Y., said in a statement.
The Vermont attorney general’s office declined to comment because of the ongoing nature of the investigation, other than to say, “It is an antitrust investigation arising from concerns about Facebook’s market dominance in the social media marketplace.”
Facebook’s vice president for state and local policy, Will Castleberry, said in a statement that the company would work “constructively with state attorneys general.” He added, “People have multiple choices for every one of the services we provide.”
The company’s founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, is set to testify in Congress Wednesday, mainly about Facebook’s forays into digital currency.
Antitrust concerns have also thrust Facebook into the Democratic race for president, with both Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., saying they would break up the social media company, along with tech giants Google and Amazon.
In July Sanders said Facebook has “incredible power over the economy, over the political life of this country in a very dangerous sense.”
Zuckerberg responded to similar pledges from Warren in an internal Facebook meeting that was recorded and leaked to The Verge.
“If she gets elected president, then I would bet that we will have a legal challenge, and I would bet that we will win the legal challenge,” he said.
Zuckerberg added that he didn’t want to file a lawsuit against the government. “But look, at the end of the day, if someone’s going to try to threaten something that existential, you go to the mat and you fight,” he said.
