Co-founder wants US government to split Facebook into multiple companies

Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes wants the US government to split the company. He says so in an opinion piece in an American newspaper. According to him, CEO Mark Zuckerberg now has too much power without being held accountable.

Co-founder Chris Hughes says in his New York Times piece that Facebook in general and Zuckerberg in particular has an unprecedented power over the communication of several billion people. “Because Facebook dominates social networks, there is no accountability in the marketplace. That means every time Facebook messes up, we repeat an exhausting pattern: first anger, then disappointment, and finally resignation.”

According to him, that pattern can only be broken by splitting up Facebook and forbidding individual companies from taking over other companies in the coming years. Competition should arise in the market for social networks, for example, which would be punished in the event of incidents and scandals, because users could then switch to another network.

Hughes is undecided on what that split should look like. He also advocates a “privacy watchdog” in the United States and legislation such as the European General Data Protection Regulation. It doesn’t exist in the US. Earlier this week, Google CEO Sundar Pichai also argued for GDPR-like legislation in the US.

Chris Hughes co-founded Facebook at Harvard University in 2004. He has been out of the company for over a decade. The US FTC is about to fine Facebook billions for privacy violations, the company reported last week in its quarterly results.

Zuckerberg and Hughes with their laptops in 2004, when Facebook was founded. Source: Rick Friedman