The article attempts to pretend what's going on is new.

It's not at all. The article is just another emotional, absurd, fear mongering trial balloon.

Let's use logic and examine the facts.

Facebook and Google are not more powerful globally than Standard Oil, US Steel, or JP Morgan were at their zenith. Aramco is more powerful than Google by a dramatic margin. Much less The British East India Company (which had a lot more direct muscle behind it than other commercial giants). Norway's sovereign fund probably has more real power than Google or Facebook.

JP Morgan had incredible power at its peak. The man, JP Morgan, was the director of America's financial markets at a time when the US was the world's largest economy.

Standard Oil was so big vs the US Government, JD Rockefeller bailed out the government by pledging his assets as a stabilizing factor during one of the largest panics. Today that's so far away from feasible as to be comical to even consider. Google could bail out the US Government's operations for about a week, and would instantly vaporize in a small wave of a financial tsunami like 2009 (Google couldn't have even saved one tiny little corner of that mess such as AIG).

Now the power in all regards of the US Government is at least 10x what it was during the industrial revolution. It has a vast standing military capable of destroying nations at will. It has vast regulatory power that didn't exist 100 years ago. It has vastly increased taxing power that didn't exist 100 years ago. It has an extremely powerful central bank that has a financial strangle-hold over most things financial in the US (and partially globally). Just the SEC working with a few dozen FBI agents alone could destroy Facebook if unleashed with just a few new laws (not an exaggeration).

1) Facebook has no physical capabilities. Facebook is easily destroyed by the government. They can raid Facebook's offices any day of the week with guns and end the corporation forever. That's not an exaggeration, any day of the week - Facebook has no physical defense, it will never have that capability. It will always be subservient to the extreme might of the US Government. Any domestic challenge to the physical power of the US Government will be met with obvious consequences, see: all of US history.

2) Facebook has no meaningful power over global or domestic financial markets. It has $30b in cash and $16b in 2017 profit. A joke (x100+) compared to the power of the central bank of China; it's a joke (x30) compared to the Norway sovereign fund.

3) Facebook has no taxing authority (placing ads on your own web site that people use voluntarily is not a taxing authority; taxing authority is being able to force people to pay, being able to take their wages against their will, backed up by threat of force), no serious ability to issue currency, and it has no independent financial capability not directly tied to a nation's central bank. (yet, maybe crypto-currencies change this in 20 years). That is, it's hostage to where it operates, and inherently subservient to large nations. The EU broadly can end Facebook's ability to operate within most of Europe any time it decided to do so (with likely consequences on trade, but non-the-less). Facebook's recourse? Cry in the corner, similar to Google's recourse when it gets massively fined by the EU.

4) Facebook has no ability to dictate domestic terms to the people or government in a nation in which it operates (several European & Asian nations are actively demonstrating this). What I mean by that, is: any given nation can turn off Facebook at any given time, plenty of nations have demonstrated that type of ability and willingness over the years (China being the ultimate example, but others such as Turkey or Brazil have done similar things). The mere fact that it can't even manage to control this vector, reveals how weak it actually is compared to nations (why? because it has neither the financial power of a small nation nor any physical might at all (no physical might means even weak small nations can ignore you at will with few consequences)).

This article is pathetic.