Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes has called for federal regulators to break up the company, saying that CEO Mark Zuckerberg is too powerful and that the company is an effective monopoly.
'It is time to break up Facebook,' Hughes, who was Zuckerberg's Harvard roommate, wrote in a searing op-ed for the New York Times on Thursday. 'Mark's power is unprecedented and un-American.'
Hughes, 35, helped build Facebook from the beginning, and was a key creator in products like the social network's New Feed. He left the company in 2007 to join Barack Obama's first presidential campaign, and says he liquidated his Facebook stock in 2012.
Now, Hughes says he has watched with horror as the company he helped create has grown into a behemoth that threatens to crush free speech and stifle competitive innovation.
Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes has called for federal regulators to break up the company, saying that CEO Mark Zuckerberg is too powerful and Facebook is a monopoly
Hughes (left) is seen with Zuckerberg in Palo Alto in the early days of Facebook. The pair were college roommates and collaborated on the creation of Facebook
Zuckerberg testifies before Congress last year. Hughes says that federal regulators need to intervene immediately and force Facebook to break up into separate companies
According to Hughes, the most dire threat at Facebook is Zuckerberg's 'unilateral control over speech.'
'There is no precedent for his ability to monitor, organize and even censor the conversations of two billion people,' he continued.
'Mark's influence is staggering, far beyond that of anyone else in the private sector or in government,' Hughes wrote.
Hughes said that Zuckerberg has virtually unlimited control over algorithms that determine what each of billions of Facebook users sees in their News Feed, what privacy settings they can use, and even which
