Break up Facebook to curb Zuckerberg, says co-founder
ONE of Facebook’s co-founders has called for the social network to be broken up to rein in Mark Zuckerberg’s “staggering” power.
Chris Hughes, who co-founded Facebook in 2004 and shared a dorm room at Harvard University with Mr Zuckerberg, said the firm had grown into an all-powerful monopoly.
Mr Zuckerberg had “created a leviathan that crowds out entrepreneurship and restricts consumer choice”, he said.
Facebook is the world’s largest social network, with more than two billion users. It also owns Messenger, Whatsapp, and Instagram, each used by more than a billion people.
Facebook’s acquisition of potential rivals and the copying of key features of others had left consumers with no real alternative to using Facebook’s apps to communicate online, said Mr Hughes.
Writing in The New York Times, he warned that his biggest concern was the lack of oversight and the concentration of power over speech and politics.
He added that Mr Zuckerberg had an endless drive for “domination” that had not been checked.
“The American government needs to do two things: break up Facebook’s monopoly and regulate the company to make it more accountable to the American people,” he said.
“Mark is a good, kind person. But I’m angry that his focus on growth led him to sacrifice security and civility for clicks.
“And I’m worried that Mark has surrounded himself with a team that reinforces his beliefs instead of challenging them.” Mr Hughes quit Facebook in 2007 and is reported to have made £330million from his stake.
Sir Nick Clegg, Facebook’s head of global affairs and communication, said: “Facebook accepts that with success comes accountability. But you don’t enforce accountability by calling for the break-up of a successful American company.”
The former leader of the Liberal Democrats was accused of hypocrisy, as his comments conflict with a column he wrote in 2017 criticising the “near monopoly” of “a tiny number of big players” in Silicon Valley.