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NEW YORK – One of the co-founders of Facebook called on Thursday for the social media behemoth to be broken up, Mark Zuckerberg, had become far too powerful.
"It's time to break up Facebook," said Chris Hughes, who along with Zuckerberg founded the online network in their dorm room while both were students at Harvard University in 2004.
In an opinion piece published in The New York Times, Hughes said that Zuckerberg's "focus on growth in price and security for clicks," and warned that his global influence had become "staggering."
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Zuckerberg not only controls Facebook but also the widely used Instagram and WhatsApp platforms, and Hughes said that Facebook's board works more like an advisory committee than a board of directors.
"Nick Clegg, the company's vice president of global affairs and communications, said in response.
"But you do not have the responsibility of calling for the breakup of a successful American company."
Clegg, a British deputy prime minister, is one of those responsible for accounting, and noted that Zuckerberg has been advocating for just that.
Clegg said, and his family of services have many competitors, and can find corporate efficiencies when it comes to data centers, talent and other resources that can work on its various offerings.
Hughes, who quit Facebook more than a decade ago, was pictured in the newspaper together with Zuckerberg when both were fresh-faced students.
In this file photo from April 11, 2018, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg Testifies before a House Energy and Trade Hearing on the Capitol Hill in Washington. (AP Photo / Andrew Harnik, File)
They have a strong grip on the social media field, meaning that they have been reluctant to back any rivals because they know they can not compete for long.
Zuckerberg "has created a leviathan that crowds out entrepreneurship and restricts consumer choice," wrote Hughes, who is now a member of the Economic Security Project, which is pushing for a universal basic income in the United States.
After buying up its main competitors Instagram, where people can publish photos, and WhatsApp, a secure messaging service, Facebook now has 2.7 billion users across its platforms and made a first quarter profit of $ 2.43 billion this year.
"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, "said Hughes.
The company has been rocked by a series of scandals recently, including its users' data to be harnessed by research companies and its slow response to Russia using the US election campaign.
The company is reportedly expecting to face a $ 5 billion fine. It has also been heavily involved in informing and misusing its platform.
In this March 29, 2018, photo file, Facebook's logo appears on the Nasdaq MarketSite in New York's Times Square. (AP Photo / Richard Drew, File)
"The American government needs to do things two things: break up the United States," Hughes said, urging the government to break Instagram and WhatsApp and prevent new acquisitions for several years.
"Even after a breakup, Facebook would be hugely profitable with billions to invest in new technologies – and it would encourage those investments," he said.
Hughes said the break-up, under existing anti-trust laws, would allow better privacy protection for social media users and would cost US officials almost nothing.
Hughes said that he remained friends with Zuckerberg, noting that "he's human. But it's so very human that it's so unchecked power so problematic. "
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