The co-founder of Facebook says that it's time to separate the company

(Reuters) – Chris Hughes, co-founder of Facebook Inc. and former roommate Mark Zuckerberg, called for breaking the social network in an opinion piece published in The New York Times.

"We are a nation with a tradition of controlling the monopolies, as well-meaning as the leaders of these companies are. Mark's power is unprecedented and anti-American, "Hughes wrote Thursday.

Facebook has the largest social network with over 2 billion users worldwide. It also has WhatsApp, Messenger and Instagram, each used by over a billion people.

Hughes co-founded Facebook at Harvard in 2004 with company CEO Zuckerberg and Dustin Moskovitz. He left Facebook in 2007 and later, in a LinkedIn article, he said he earned half a billion dollars in three years of work.

"It's been 15 years since I co-founded Facebook at Harvard and I have not worked for the company for a decade. But I feel a sense of anger and responsibility, "said Hughes, who then served as online strategist for Barack Obama during the 2008 presidential campaign.

The company did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

In one of the many security and privacy-related scandals, Facebook is accused of inappropriately sharing information belonging to 87 million users with the British law firm. British political council today gone Cambridge Analytica.

Hughes said he had met Zuckerberg for the last time in the summer of 2017, several months before the start of the Cambridge Analytica scandal.

"Mark is a good and kind person. But I'm sorry his concentration on growth has led him to sacrifice security and civility for clicks, "said Hughes.

"And I'm worried Mark has surrounded himself with a team that reinforces his beliefs instead of challenging them."

Hughes is not the only one to demand the dissolution of Facebook. Some lawmakers have called for federal privacy regulations and antitrust measures to dismantle large technology companies.

Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren, in March, promised to dismantle Facebook, Amazon and Google if she were elected president of the United States, to promote competition in the technology sector.