Time to Break Up Facebook, Regulate Tech Companies, Says co-Founder

Facebook’s co-founder called CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s power “unprecedented and un-American,” and said it's time to break up the company. In a 6,000-word New York Times opinion online Thursday, Chris Hughes, who left the company in 2007, called Zuckerberg’s influence controlling Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, “staggering, far beyond that of anyone else in the private sector or in government.” Government “must hold Mark accountable,” said Hughes, who called Zuckerberg’s “unilateral control over speech” the “most problematic aspect of Facebook’s power.” Government should break up Facebook just as it did such monopolies as Standard Oil and AT&T, said Hughes, co-chairman of the Economic Security Project and a senior adviser at the Roosevelt Institute. He called on Congress to create an agency to regulate tech companies that would protect privacy, guarantee basic interoperability across platforms and create guidelines for acceptable speech on social media. Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., agreed that “in retrospect, the FTC should not have approved Facebook’s acquisition of Instagram & WhatsApp in 2012. I believe the way forward is to heavily scrutinize future mergers and to ensure no company has anti-competitive platform privileges,” he said in a statement. Vice President-Global Affairs Nick Clegg responded that Facebook acknowledges the need for accountability. He said that "you don’t enforce accountability by calling for the breakup of a successful American company. Accountability of tech companies can only be achieved through the painstaking introduction of new rules for the internet."