Facebook Inc. co-founder and former Mark Zuckerberg roommate Chris Hughes called for the break up of the world’s largest social media network in an opinion piece in the New York Times on Thursday.
In a 5,700-word New York Times op-ed piece published Thursday, Hughes argued that Zuckerberg holds “unchecked power” that is “unprecedented and un-American.”
“Mark is a good, kind person. But I’m angry that his focus on growth led him to sacrifice security and civility for clicks,” wrote Hughes, who is now co-chairman of the Economic Security Project and a senior adviser at liberal think tank the Roosevelt Institute.
“And I’m worried that Mark has surrounded himself with a team that reinforces his beliefs instead of challenging them,” he wrote.
In the op-ed, Hughes called for the FTC, together with the Department of Justice, to force Facebook to spin off Instagram and WhatsApp into separate companies, and also to bar Facebook from making acquisitions for several years.
“Mark Zuckerberg cannot fix Facebook, but our government can,” Hughes wrote.
Facebook is anticipating an FTC fine of up to $5 billion to settle allegations of the company’s violations of privacy regulations. But that “slap on the wrist” is not enough to check Facebook’s dangerous and anticompetitive control over communication in the digital age, according to Hughes.
“The most problematic aspect of Facebook’s power is Mark’s unilateral control over speech. There is no precedent for his ability to monitor, organize and even censor the conversations of two billion people,” Hughes wrote.
Hughes joins U.S. lawmakers who have also urged anti-trust action to break up big tech companies as well as federal privacy regulation. Facebook has been under scrutiny from regulators around the world over its data sharing practices and hate speech and misinformation on its networks.
“We are a nation with a tradition of reining in monopolies, no matter how well intentioned the leaders of these companies may be. Mark’s power is unprecedented and un-American,” Hughes wrote in the New York Times piece.
Facebook’s social network has more than 2 billion users across the world. It also owns WhatsApp, Messenger and Instagram, each used by more than 1 billion people. Facebook bought Instagram in 2012 and WhatsApp in 2014.
Senator Elizabeth Warren, a Democratic presidential candidate, in March vowed to break up Facebook (FB), Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN) and Alphabet Inc.’s Google (GOOG) if elected U.S. president to promote competition in the tech sector.
“Today’s big tech companies have too much power—over our economy, our society, & our democracy. They’ve bulldozed competition, used our private info for profit, hurt small businesses & stifled innovation. It’s time to #BreakUpBigTech,” Warren said on Twitter on Thursday.
U.S. President Donald Trump has called for the creation of “more, and fairer” social media companies in response to discrimination he alleges he has faced as a Republican from Twitter Inc.
Hughes co-founded Facebook in 2004 at Harvard with the company’s Chief Executive Officer Zuckerberg and Dustin Moskovitz. He quit Facebook in 2007 and later said in a LinkedIn post that he made half a billion dollars for his three years of work.
“It’s been 15 years since I co-founded Facebook at Harvard, and I haven’t worked at the company in a decade. But I feel a sense of anger and responsibility,” said Hughes, who later was an online strategist for Barack Obama during the 2008 presidential campaign.
Representative Ro Khanna, a California Democrat, said in a statement that he agreed that in retrospect that U.S. regulators “should not have approved Facebook’s acquisition of Instagram & WhatsApp in 2012.”
He said that “the way forward is to heavily scrutinize future mergers and to ensure no company has anti-competitive platform privileges.”
Facebook did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
In one of a number of security and privacy scandals to hit the company, Facebook is accused of inappropriately sharing information belonging to 87 million users with the now-defunct British political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica.
The company has been in advanced talks with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission to settle a year-old investigation and said last month it expected to spend between $3 billion and $5 billion on a penalty.
On Monday, Republican and Democratic U.S. senators criticized reported plans for the settlement, calling on the FTC to impose harsher penalties and more restrictions on Facebook’s business practices.
Hughes said he last met with Zuckerberg in the summer of 2017, several months before the Cambridge Analytica scandal broke.
According to Hughes, he sold his Facebook shares in 2012 and does not invest directly in any social-media companies.
Facebook shares (FB) were down about 1% near midday Thursday at $187.65.
via newsmax
I agree, they need broken up, they won’t allow any idea’s that he disagrees with to post! This is not “freedom of speech” , it is a totally controlled site, that pushes his “LIBERAL SOCIALIST IDEA’S”!
Zuckerberg is evil for anything conservative is offensive to this monster. All of these social media places need to be checked out because they all only want liberal points of view and they are shutting down all other thoughts. It’s like mass hypnotism.
So many people on our side write comments blasting the big techs for their commie ways, yet two comments down the same person will tell you about the cool thing he just bought on Amazon, or the quote from someone he read on his Twitter, or haw about the search he did on Google. And lets not leave out how the “Normie” will brag about watching some dumb TV show on Netflix.
People, if you want assbites like Suckerborg to “hear” you, you have to stop using their products. And that means shutting down your Fakebook account, find another streaming movie provider, leave Instagram, Twitter, Google, Amazon and the like and cut your data flow off from these vultures.
No surprise here at all. I have been in jail three different times for 30 days each for posting truth. No threats, no name calling but FB allows the left to threaten Trump and his family 24/7.
Also, when we see Christians being slaughtered worldwide and no news coverage or rage on FB to make sure the public sees the truth.
I keep being put inFB jail because someone across the world can’t handle the truth about the Muslim terrorists. It has happened, is happening and will continue to happen if the world keeps letting them instill their terrorism in every country they move into. Truth be told. Religion does not teach hatred and terrorism.
Zuckerberg Is a communist his wife is Chinese, so he want power that why. Why Americans people are so hasn’t woke up yet. We had a communist run I the show which is everyone on calls social media. Government needs to investigate FACEBOOK!!!
Don’t just breakup face book. Twitter, Google, Yahoo, U-tube, and Amazon also need to be broken up into local companies with local control. No companies should be allowed to block content. If you do not like something that gets put out there, just don’t look at it.
The NAZI rise to power started with censorship. The NAZIs refused to publish stuff that made them look bad and after enough NAZIs got elected, they showed there true colors. We know what happened: Hitler was able to force laws through the legislature increasing his power. Later came the raid by NAZIs on the Jewish community, taking away Jewish rites as German citizens and finally the Holocaust resulting in the death of 6 million Jews just because they were Jewish.
Censorship is what Socialists, Communists and Dictators use to hang on to power. The censorship of conservative ideas by liberals to cover their corruption can lead to another holocaust. Stalin and other Socialists leaders killed hundreds of millions of people who were critical of what the Communists believed was right and, is the only way Communists managed to stay in power. The former Soviet Union, Cuba and now Venezuela is being destroyed by the desire of dictators to stay in power no matter what the cost to a country’s people and its economy.
In fact, facebook and twitter have become the de facto public square. Controlled by Zio-Jews. And they control, delete or ban any anti-Zionist content. That is unconstitutional. But no politician dare ever go against the Jews because they control the Benjamins and the public square. And off to war we go, And off to war we go, for Israel, And off to war we go, to vanquish Iran, And off to war we go, for Israel, again, And off to war we go.