- Increased regulatory scrutiny, taxes, antitrust, and new product experiences make up the case for shorting shares of Facebook (FB -0.9%) and Alphabet (GOOG +0.6%), said Chamath Palihapitiya, Social Capital CEO and former Facebook executive, in a series of tweets.
- He qualifies his argument with "if you have the capital/stomach for a 5yr+ bet."
- "BigTech’s long term success is no longer about better products," he argues. "They are incumbents and their success is now a multi-variate/multi-dimensional problem of competition, anti-trust, tax and regulatory multiplied by EVERY city, state, country and jurisdiction in which the operate."
- He also contends that big tech's huge yearly R&D budget could "recreate the Apollo program" but hasn't due to "lack of creativity, sloth, internecine politics, and waste."
- Yesterday, the Supreme Court agreed to hear Facebook's appeal of a lawsuit accusing the social media giant of violating federal law by sending users unsolicited text message.