By VOA |
Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes has called for the breakup of Facebook, the world’s largest social media company.
Hughes says the United States has laws to control monopolies – businesses that control too much of an industry. He wants the U.S. government to use those laws to help protect people from technology and social media companies.
His comments appeared Thursday in an opinion piece in The New York Times.
Facebook Inc. quickly rejected his call.
Hughes once shared a room in college with Mark Zuckerberg, who later became Facebook’s chief executive officer.
“We are a nation with a tradition of reining in monopolies, no matter how well intentioned the leaders of these companies may be. Mark’s power is unprecedented and un-American,” Hughes wrote.
Is Facebook too big?
More than 2 billion people worldwide currently use Facebook. The company also owns WhatsApp, Messenger and Instagram. Each service has more than 1 billion users.
Chris Hughes co-founded Facebook with Zuckerberg and Dustin Moskovitz at Harvard University in 2004. He left the company in 2007. He later said in a LinkedIn post that he earned $500 million for his three years of work.
“It’s been 15 years since I co-founded Facebook at Harvard, and I haven’t worked at the company in a decade. But I feel a sense of anger and responsibility,” he wrote.
Hughes helped Barack Obama with his presidential election campaign’s online strategy during the 2008 political campaign.
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