Chris Hughes, one of the founders of Facebook, has called on US regulators to break up the company, arguing that chief executive Mark Zuckerberg has gained more control over public conversation than any one person should have.
Hughes set out his case in a long opinion essay in The New York Times on 9 May 2019 under the headline It’s Time to Break Up Facebook. He shared a room with Zuckerberg at Harvard and helped build the social network in its first years before leaving in 2007 to work on Barack Obama’s presidential campaign. He has said he sold his Facebook shares in 2012.
The argument
Hughes wrote that Zuckerberg’s ability to shape what billions of people see in their feeds, how their privacy settings work and which rivals survive amounted to a concentration of power without precedent in the private sector or in government. He pointed out that Zuckerberg controls a majority of the voting shares, so even the company’s board has limited means to check him.
His main proposal was antitrust action. Hughes said the Federal Trade Commission should not have allowed Facebook to buy Instagram in 2012 and WhatsApp in 2014, and that those businesses should now be separated into independent companies. He also called for a new federal agency to oversee privacy and online speech rules.
A shift in Washington
US competition law has traditionally focused on whether a dominant company raises prices. Because Facebook is free for users and earns its money from targeted advertising, critics had long argued that the usual tests did not fit. Hughes said that approach overlooked the harm done by reduced competition and innovation.
He repeated the argument in an interview with NBC News the same day, saying the company had become too big and too powerful.
Facebook’s response
Facebook rejected the call. Its head of global affairs, Nick Clegg, wrote that breaking up a successful American company would not solve the problems Hughes described and that the answer lay in new rules for the internet, which the company said it supported.
The essay came as US regulators were taking a closer look at big technology firms. In the years that followed, the Federal Trade Commission brought an antitrust case seeking to unwind the Instagram and WhatsApp deals, keeping the debate Hughes joined in the courts and in Congress.
Sources: Chris Hughes, opinion essay in The New York Times (9 May 2019); NBC News interview; Facebook statements.