The professor who became famous for coining the phrase ‘net neutrality’ thinks that the U.S. government needs to break up tech giants like Facebook, Amazon,and Google.

Tim Wu, a law professor at Columbia University who specializes in antitrust issues, says that large tech companies have become too big and pose a threat to the future of American democracy.

‘We live in America, which has a strong and proud tradition of breaking up companies that are too big for inefficient reasons,’ Wu told The Verge.

‘We need to reverse this idea that it’s not an American tradition. We’ve broken up dozens of companies.’

The professor who became famous for coining the phrase ‘net neutrality’ thinks that the U.S. government needs to break up tech giants like Facebook, Amazon,and Google. Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg is seen above in Paris in May

Tim Wu, a law professor at Columbia University who specializes in antitrust issues, says that large tech companies have become too big and pose a threat to the future of American democracy

Wu makes the case for breaking up tech giants in his new book, The Curse of Bigness: Antitrust in the New Gilded Age.

He says that the U.S. government made a mistake when it did not intervene in Facebook’s acquisition of two competitors - WhatsApp and Instagram.

Wu argues that Facebook was able to gain monopolistic control over the social media market by buying two of its rivals.

Wu makes the case for breaking up tech giants in his new book, The Curse of Bigness: Antitrust in the New Gilded Age

‘I think if you took a hard look at the acquisition of WhatsApp and Instagram, the argument that the effects of those acquisitions have been anticompetitive would be easy to prove for a number of reasons,’ says Wu.

He says that breaking up Facebook is not as difficult as it may seem.

‘What would be the harm? You’ll have three competitors,’ Wu says.

‘It’s not “Oh my god, if you get rid of WhatsApp and Instagram, well then the whole world’s going to fall apart”.

‘It would be like “Okay, now you have some companies actually trying to offer you an alternative to Facebook”.’

Wu’s sentiments appear to be a reflection of a growing backlash against tech companies who have amassed considerable power and influence over the public discourse.

Facebook and Twitter executives assured Congress on Wednesday that they are aggressively working to root out foreign attempts to sow discord in America, and they pledged to better protect their social networks against manipulation during the 2018 midterm elections and beyond.

Facebook's No. 2 executive, Sheryl Sandberg, and Twitter's CEO, Jack Dorsey, testified before the Senate intelligence committee in the morning, but there was an empty chair for Google parent company Alphabet, which refused to send its top executive.

In the afternoon, Dorsey went before a House panel alone to address Republican concerns that Twitter is censoring conservatives. Dorsey denied that is happening.

The hearings come at a critical time, just two months before the midterm elections and as President Donald Trump has charged that Twitter is biased against Republican views.

As the executives spoke, the Justice Department announced it would look at whether their companies are hurting competition and 'intentionally stifling the free exchange of ideas on their platforms.'

He says that the U.S. government made a mistake when it did not intervene in Facebook’s acquisition of two competitors - WhatsApp and Instagram (whose logo is seen in the above stock image)

Justice Department spokesman Devin O'Malley said Attorney General Jeff Sessions will meet with a number of state attorneys general later this month to discuss the department's concerns.

Thirteen Russians were indicted by special counsel Robert Mueller this year on charges of taking part in a plot to disrupt the 2016 election by creating fake social media accounts that pushed divisive issues.

Both Facebook and Twitter are using artificial intelligence and other increasingly sophisticated technology to combat manipulation.

Facebook is going after 'inauthenticity,' or fake accounts.

Twitter is focusing on analyzing behavior patterns to find suspicious activity because Twitter technically allows 'fake' accounts.

The companies have made many policy changes and have caught and banned malicious accounts over the past year.

Still, their business models - free services that rely on attracting as many users as possible for as long as possible and finding out as much about them as possible - remain the same, and that has posed challenges in rooting out those bent on mischief.