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Facebook rejects co-founder call for breakup, senator urges antitrust probe

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WASHINGTON: Facebook Inc quickly rejected a call from co-founder Chris Hughes on Thursday to split the world’s largest social media company in three, while lawmakers urged the US Justice Department to launch an antitrust investigation.


Facebook has been under scrutiny from regulators around the world over data sharing practices as well as hate speech and misinformation on its networks. Some US lawmakers have pushed for action to break up big tech companies as well as federal privacy regulation.


“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, a former college roommate of Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg, wrote in a lengthy New York Times opinion piece.


Facebook’s social network has more than 2 billion users. It also owns WhatsApp, Messenger and Instagram, each used by more than 1 billion people. Facebook bought Instagram in 2012 and WhatsApp in 2014.


Facebook rejected Hughes’ call for WhatsApp and Instagram to be made into separate companies, and said the focus should instead be on regulating the internet. Zuckerberg will be in Paris on Friday to discuss internet regulation with French President Emmanuel Macron.


“Facebook accepts that with success comes accountability. But you don’t enforce accountability by calling for the break up of a successful American company,” Facebook spokesman Nick Clegg said in a statement.


“Accountability of tech companies can only be achieved through the painstaking introduction of new rules for the internet. That is exactly what Mark Zuckerberg has called for.”


Late on Thursday, Senator Mike Crapo, the Republican who chairs the banking committee and Sherrod Brown, the top Democrat, asked Facebook to answer questions about a potential cryptocurrency-based payments system using its social network and its data collection.


The letter also asked questions about consumer privacy protections and if it had information about users’ creditworthiness.


US Senator Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat, told CNBC he thinks Facebook should be broken up and that the Justice Department’s antitrust division needs to begin an investigation.


Antitrust law makes such a proposal tough to execute because the government would have to take the company to court and win. It is rare to break up a company but not unheard of, with Standard Oil and AT&T being the two biggest examples.


Hughes co-founded Facebook in 2004 at Harvard with Zuckerberg and Dustin Moskovitz. He left Facebook in 2007, and has said in a LinkedIn post he made half a billion dollars 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,” Hughes said.


Facebook lost several executives after a bruising series of privacy and disinformation scandals since 2016. The founders of Instagram and WhatsApp have left, as has the executive who took over WhatsApp last year.


— Reuters


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