Chris Hughes, Facebook Co-Founder Joins US Authorities to Dismantle Facebook

A few days after the United States government launched a blanket antitrust investigation against Big Tech. It was recently announced that Chris Hughes is also backing the indictment in his Facebook takedown campaign., the largest social media company he founded with Mark Zuckerberg.

In recent weeks, reportedly met with senior officials from the United States government and the Department of Justice, academics, attorneys general and leaders of the Federal Trade Commission to discuss a possible antitrust case against Facebook.

According to reports published on Friday by various media in the United States, Chris Hughe left the social network in 2007 and cashed in for his shares worth nearly $ 500 million. He made a tour of the USA to advocate for the dismantling of the social network.

During his tour of the capital, also met with two prominent law academics from the competition, Scott Hemphill from New York University and Tim Wu from Columbia University.

During the various meetings he held, Chris Hughes and his interlocutors discussed a possible antitrust case that charges the social media giant, which today has more than 2.7 billion active users per month.

For Hughes, the observation is simple: "Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg kill the competition."

According to him, the government should hold Mark to account. He believes lawmakers have long marveled at Facebook's explosive growth and neglected their responsibility to ensure the protection of Americans and the competitiveness of markets.

“Soon the Federal Trade Commission should fine the company $ 5 billion, but that's not enough. Facebook is also not proposing to name a type of privacy officer. After Mark's testimony in Congress last year, he should have been asked to really take his mistakes, "he said in his editorial.

According to Hughes, lawmakers who interviewed Mark Zuckerberg after the Cambridge Analytica scandal were ridiculed and presented as too old and disconnected to understand how technology works.

For him, this is the impression Zuckerberg wanted Americans to get. because it means that little will change. Immediately after his statement, he was joined by political figures such as Senator Elizabeth Warren or journalists such as former Wall Street Journal columnist Walt Mossberg.

The latter had taken over Twitter to show support for Hughes, saying they share his opinion, namely the dismantling of Facebook and a regulation of the remaining entities under a new federal law on the protection of privacy.

Those who want the government to dissolve Facebook argue that this decision would result in increased competition among social media companies, which could mean more choice for consumers.

Others also say that it would pressure society to do more in terms of privacy protection.

According to the two American media, the New York Times and the Washington Post, during some of their recent meetings, he and his staff presented a 39-page slideshow presenting a point-by-point legal argument in favor of decommissioning of the network, based on decades of antitrust jurisprudence.

On its own, Facebook has acquired more than 75 small businesses in the last 15 years. Additionally, the two antitrust scholars and longtime collaborators have developed an argument for Facebook's fragmentation that appears on the various slides presented at various meetings with members of the government and regulators.

Hughes and his associates have tried to show that for almost ten years, Facebook has made "acquisitions (Instagram for $ 1 billion in 2012 and Whatsapp for 19 billion in 2014, for the most serious cases of" defensive series "with the in order to protect your dominant position in the social media market.

Until then, we still don't know if these different results will be enough to dissolve Facebook, but if it did happen, it would still be a rare case. Hughes and his companions do not lower their arms.


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  1.   chorax said

    Not a single source in the news? Do you get all the information yourself, David Naranjo?