Wires, walls and Marc by Sabine Fischer

Back in the nostalgic days of dial-up tones and Yahoo chat rooms, a young Bill Gates was the digital messiah of the Windows empire. But somewhere between Windows 95 and the turn-of-the-century, he stepped on the toes of antitrust regulators with his browser power-play: Internet Explorer. The U.S. government accused Gates of unfairly bundling his browser with Windows to crush competition, Netscape, at the time, being the most obvious roadkill.

He was dragged through headlines, late-night jokes, and courtrooms like a man who had tried to sell forbidden fruit inside the Garden of Eden. Microsoft wasn’t just a company, it was the company. The phrase “monopoly” wasn’t just for board games anymore.

Now fast forward two decades, and we find ourselves staring into the pixelated abyss of a new digital deity: Mark Zuckerberg. The boy-wonder of Harvard dorm-room legend, turned social media mogul turned global influence kingmaker. Unlike Gates, Zuck isn’t bundling browsers—he’s bundling your grandma’s banana bread recipe with geopolitical manipulation, psychological profiling, and a hefty dose of digital addiction.

And what’s the response?

Crickets. Well, no. Not crickets, likes. Applause. Carefully curated Congressional tap dances. Smiles from certain political figures who once shouted about “fake news” while giving Zuckerberg a gentleman’s nod across the political dinner table.

Let’s not pretend this is a coincidence.

Bill Gates got a slap for nudging people toward his browser. Zuckerberg gets a grin while swallowing up Instagram, WhatsApp, and every budding competitor like a Silicon Valley black hole. Monopoly? Try octopoly. The man doesn’t just dominate social media, he redefines digital identity. He doesn't sell data. He is data. And if you're not careful, you're part of it.

The irony? He pulls it off with a smile that makes him look like a lost intern in the wrong Congressional hearing. “Senator, we run ads,” remember? A sentence so childishly innocent it made Orwell roll in his grave and then check his privacy settings.

Now here's where the Zuckerberg immunity shield gets curious. Trump and his administration, often at odds with Big Tech, seem to go unusually soft on the man behind Facebook. Sure, he’s had his moments in the hot seat, but compare his scrutiny to Gates in the early 2000s, and you might think Zuckerberg has been blessed by the gods of bipartisan negligence.

Why? Perhaps it's because Facebook serves a higher purpose these days: not connection, not community but control. A tool. A political weapon disguised as a platform. When elections ride on engagement, and engagement rides on outrage, who wouldn’t want a friend who’s already coded the chaos?

Trump understood the algorithm better than most. He didn't just use Facebook, he gamed it. And Zuck? He let it happen with the gentle guidance of a platform “struggling” to moderate billions of posts. Of course, the moderation algorithm tends to miss what’s politically convenient. How fortunate.

Today’s tech giants don’t just sell software. They sell narratives, behavior, and the illusion of freedom. And Mark Zuckerberg sits on top of this digital Mount Olympus, waving down with a boyish grin and a Terms of Service longer than most political manifestos.

The public outrage? Minimal. The legal pressure? Laughable. The response from those in power? Mostly a mix of “We’ll look into it” and “Have you tried boosting your post?”

Compare that to the days when Bill Gates couldn’t yawn without a federal agent checking if it was bundled with Excel.

So what’s changed?

Simple. Gates tried to own your desktop. Zuckerberg owns you.

This is not an anti-Zuckerberg tirade, it’s an anti-complacency one. The rules of monopoly haven’t changed. The guardians have. And while Zuckerberg plays with new toys like the Metaverse (which is basically The Sims with existential dread), the world seems strangely comfortable with his unchecked expansion.

If Gates taught us anything, it’s that tech monopolies eventually become too big to ignore. But this time, we’re not ignoring them, we’re liking, sharing, and subscribing to them.

And somewhere, behind the walls of Meta HQ, Zuck smiles. Because when power comes not with resistance, but engagement, he doesn’t need to conquer. He just needs to connect.