In an article written by New York Times, one of Facebook's co-founders called for the social network to be broken up. Chris Hughes, who helped Mark Zuckerberg start Facebook 15 years ago out of Harvard, says the Federal Trade Commission should stop the platforms of WhatsApp, Instagram, and Facebook in order to create more competition in social media and messaging applications.
Hughes reports as a financial argument that Facebook has become a monopoly and that competition is very limited, effectively stopping innovation.
It is impossible for users to switch to an alternative social network because there are no serious competitors.
Hughes reports that 2011 has not launched new social networks and that 84% of social media advertising costs are collected directly through Facebook.
The problem but with Facebook, it goes beyond economics, according to Hughes. The platform's News Feed algorithms dictate the content that millions of people see every day. The rules for the content it uses also define what is considered hate speech. It also states that there is no democratic oversight of Facebook's operations.
Zuckerberg's ownership of the majority of Facebok's shares means there is no internal control of the current CEO's power, and of course, as we all know, there is no government service dedicated to overseeing a company like Facebook.
Hughes says:
Mark's influence is shocking, and is far beyond the influence of someone else in the private sector or government. It controls three basic communication platforms - Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp - which are used by everyday billions of people.
Only Mark can decide how to configure Facebook's algorithms to determine what users see in their News Feeds, what privacy settings they can use, and which messages will be delivered. It sets the rules on how to distinguish the hate speech, violence in the discussion, or a simple verbal attack, and can choose to close a competitor by acquiring, blocking or copying.
Mark is a good man, but I'm angry with him because his focus on growth has led him to sacrifice security and courtesy for clicks.
Along with the split of the company, Facebook co-founder calls on the US to create a government agency dedicated to regulating technology companies such as Facebook. Hughes says that such an organization should be tasked with protecting the privacy of people, but also establish guidelines for how Facebook and Facebook can work, similar to the EU regulation the GDPR.
With its publication, which is worth it read as a whole, Hughes is reportedly allying with an increasing number of lawmakers demanding the dissolution of Facebook. It is worth noting that Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) has said it will dissolve the Facebook likes if 2020 is elected president.
