Facebook Co-founder Says Zuckerberg 'Not Accountable,' Calls For Government Break Up 131
Chris Hughes helped Mark Zuckerberg transform Facebook from a dorm-room project into a real business. Now, he's calling for the company to be broken up. From a report: "The Facebook that exists today is not the Facebook that we founded in 2004," Chris Hughes, who started Facebook with Mark Zuckerberg in their Harvard dorm, told NBC News following the publication of his op-ed article on the same topic. "And the one that we have today I think is far too big. It's far too powerful. And most importantly, its CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, is not accountable," Hughes said of his former business partner, whom he still called a "friend." "I have been friends with Mark and a lot of the other folks at Facebook for a long time. And you know, who knows? We may still be friends, we may not be friends. There are some kinds of friends that you can have disagreements with. And then there are some friends that you can't," Hughes said.
According to CNBC estimates, Zuckerberg and a small group of insiders control almost 70 percent of all voting shares in Facebook. Zuckerberg personally controls nearly 60 percent. If he quit as CEO tomorrow, he would still control the company through his stock ownership. But Hughes said there's one power Zuckerberg won't exercise. "I don't think that Mark Zuckerberg can fix Facebook," Hughes said. "I think only government can -- by making the market more competitive, by breaking it up, and by creating these privacy restrictions." Hughes called for the government to step in and take several drastic actions: First, reversing the mergers with Instagram and WhatsApp, which he said the FTC "incorrectly approved," spinning them out as private companies that would compete with Facebook. Second, creating a new agency to regulate technology in addition to the FTC.
According to CNBC estimates, Zuckerberg and a small group of insiders control almost 70 percent of all voting shares in Facebook. Zuckerberg personally controls nearly 60 percent. If he quit as CEO tomorrow, he would still control the company through his stock ownership. But Hughes said there's one power Zuckerberg won't exercise. "I don't think that Mark Zuckerberg can fix Facebook," Hughes said. "I think only government can -- by making the market more competitive, by breaking it up, and by creating these privacy restrictions." Hughes called for the government to step in and take several drastic actions: First, reversing the mergers with Instagram and WhatsApp, which he said the FTC "incorrectly approved," spinning them out as private companies that would compete with Facebook. Second, creating a new agency to regulate technology in addition to the FTC.
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Re: But but but (Score:2)
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https://facebook.com/help/224562897555674/
Takes about 5 seconds of work and they do the rest 14 days later.
It takes a LOT more than just forwarding the directions to the next AA meeting to get an alcoholic to stop drinking.
Facebook isn't any different.
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Breakin up is hard to do
More importantly, is seems rather pointless. What would you break up Facebook into? Regional companies, on the internet? The biggest piece will become all of Facebook in just a few years, as all the users move to the center of mass. Break off Instagram? I guess. I don't see how that actually helps though.
Re: But but but (Score:3)
They could also break the backend stuff into separate companies. Lost of industries are not vertically integrated, and different parts of the system contract with each other for services/goods.
making them separate would increase friction, even fractionally, which could create points for insertion of regulatory oversight.
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Without putting much if any serious thought into it I can think of at least four different companies, facebook, whatsapp, instagram and occulus. All are currently part of facebook.
Given some more thought I'm sure I can come up with more.
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So break it up into 90%, 0%, 10%, and 0%? OK. What does that fix? Facebook would be fine if only it didn't own Instagram? Seriously, that fixes none of the problems with Facebook.
Is Facebook going to be relevant? (Score:5, Interesting)
More and more people are abandoning the idea of social media and realizing that their lives haven't fallen apart. At some point, is it even going to matter?
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Those still sticking around, and there will be many, will be products of the mass brainwash factory with minds full of bullshit. That's not good.
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Those still sticking around, and there will be many, are products of the mass brainwash factory with minds full of bullshit. That's not good.
FTFY.
Re: Is Facebook going to be relevant? (Score:1)
More and more platforms integrate and share data with FB. News site commentary, web forum user authentication, etc.
The platform FB May be abandon but their ubiquitous data collection is here to stay.
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I don't know of any. I know some who have moved to other apps... most of them just to other facebook owned apps.
Social media is more than just Facebook (Score:5, Insightful)
More and more people are abandoning the idea of social media and realizing that their lives haven't fallen apart.
There is absolutely no evidence to support this. While you no doubt could find examples of individual who have sworn off of social media, in general it has been growing explosively and there is no evidence of people rejecting it in any meaningful numbers.
Facebook specifically may or may not remain relevant. Social media isn't going anywhere.
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If you paid just one euro/dollar per month each for services like FB, Google, Whatsapp and what have you they probably wouldn't need advertising and would be a clean environment to check out your friends, search for things etc.
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No they wouldn't. There is too much power in the information they have their ability to influence your conclusions by massaging your view of the world.
You are crazy if you think their fuckery is limited to the advertising.
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Hopefully, not.
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More and more people are abandoning the idea of social media and realizing that their lives haven't fallen apart. At some point, is it even going to matter?
Funny part about that "more and more" delusion. It doesn't outpace enrollment, and likely never will.
Just Do It (Score:2, Insightful)
Don't get the government involved.
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I think you mean "serfs", not "serves", although serfs do serve their lord ;)
Anyway, I've thought a lot about this, and the root cause I believe is a flaw in the design US constitution stemming from Federalist #10:
"that government ought to "protect the minority of the opulent against the majority" and that unchecked, democratic communities were subject to "the turbulency and weakness of unruly passions"
This I believe is the cause of C-level executives having too much power.
Proposed fixes:
1. Federal initiati
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so the only reason the union holds is because votes in some states hold more ruling power than votes in other states?
How will the US splinter, a group of states tried that before and it did not go well for them.
Do Americans these days actually identify more strongly with their state than with their country? When these rules were written that was certainly true... but its not clear at all that this is the case today. Would people support their families being separated by borders just because their votes al
Re:What will actually happen (Score:4, Insightful)
The United States of America is a Republic. It is a union of states, not people. It's right there in the name! What holds the US together is limiting the ability for one state to impose its will on another, regardless of population. It's a fundamental principle of the US that California doesn't get to tell Montanans how too live.
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Each state gets equal representation in the Senate because we're the United States not the People's Democratic Republic of Failistan. This has proven the most stable system of government in the modern era, much as I fear for its future. Ideally, the federal government would have very little power anyway, but that ship sailed a bit over 150 years ago.
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Well, it is set up with the electoral college so that a few highly populous cities don't dictate for the whole country, or all the states.
This union is of States, and you are a citizen of your state first and a citizen of the United States second, at least that's how it was set up.
As others have alluded to, this is not a democracy, it is a republic. Democracy is mob rule and the founding
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Well, it is set up with the electoral college so that a few highly populous cities don't dictate for the whole country, or all the states.
Yes, people count as less than fully human if they have less land. That's why a large number of people shouldn't really count if they all live close together. People with lots of land should be able to tell those sub-human city dwellers what to do instead.
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Yes, you may patronizingly make fun of us and call us "Suburban jackasses", but if it wasn't for people like me you'd never get your noodles and whole grain artisan pizza and whatever else it is you cityfolk eat who are also doing all the crime and living in poverty.
Don't forget the fairtrade single orgin coffee.
Prepared in an unusually elaborate artesanal brewing machine, hand made from re-purposed scrap metal.
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the western part of Massachusetts routinely holds the greater Boston area hostage and refuses to approve increases for public transportation and infrastructure improvements because they dont directly benefit from them... despite the fact that the vast majority of money in the state comes from the city and the very tax money that becomes the state component of their schools and roads and infrastructure comes from the economic engine that is Boston.
You talk about rural areas being held hostage but thats exact
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Yes, people count as less than fully human if they have less land.
Wow the stupid in your post is astounding! Nobody thinks that, the framers did not thing that either. They set TWO not one houses of government precisely because they did not think this. They made one house function by population and the other by equally representing states. The electoral college is weighted as well. CA and NY get move votes than Nebraska because they have larger populations. No they don't get as much weight as if it was a direct popular vote that is true.
Your argument might be simil
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The reason I know my argument is good is that you can only attempt to rebut it by willfully misrepresenting it first.
I didn't say the "hayseeds" should have no representation, I said the amount of representation postpone get shouldn't depend on this much land they have. A lesson in the city should have the same representation as a person in the country. Not more and not less.
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As others have alluded to, this is not a democracy, it is a republic
Other retards, you mean. Being a republic has nothing to do with being a democracy.
Thus there are 4 combinations:
1. Democracy:No, Republic: No: e.g. Saudi Arabia
2. Democracy:Yes, Republic: No: e.g. Britain, Japan
3. Democracy:No, Republic:Yes: e.g. North Korea, Myanmar
4. Democracy:Yes, Republic:Yes: e.g. France, Germany, and The United States.
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"so the only reason the union holds is because votes in some states hold more ruling power than votes in other states?"
That is a gross misrepresentation. You would subject everyone to the tyranny of a small majority whereas currently there is a mid-point where things cycle back and forth effectively giving the massive minority proportional influence over the course of time. At least in theory, simple majority flushes it down the toilet.
Living in SF, NY, LA, CHI, DAL, Houston, etc is an entirely different wo
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6. Go for a multi party system, not just two opposing parties. This forces politicians to form coalitions after every election, which keeps the dialogue healthy and gives extremists (lef and right) less chance, which is a good thing for the society.
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If you get rid of the Electoral College, you might as well get rid of the Senate. Both are predicated on the idea that smaller states should have the power to prevent a handful of larger states from trampling all over them.
As someone who lives in one of those smaller states, I can assure you that there's no way our state government would see any benefit in being part of a "union" that is
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There's no way the anti-EC movement will ever get enough leverage to remove them.
You're wrong there. Are you not familiar with the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact [wikipedia.org]?
Together, they have 189 electoral votes, which is 35.1% of the Electoral College and 70% of the 270 votes needed to give the compact legal force.
A dozen states have similar legislation pending, and if something like 2/3 of them pass it, the EC is effectively gone.
Once they reach 270 votes across the states signed onto this compact, it goes into effect. They all then give their EC votes to the winner of the popular vote, not the winner of each of those states. At that point it doesn't matter what the rest of the states do, nor whether or not we keep the EC or r
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Sure I am. There's no way it will ever take effect.
The compact is essentially an agreement by a group of blue states to ensure that no electoral votes will ever go to a Republican candidate. (Look at the current list of states that have approved it.) Not that it makes a difference to any of them, as their electoral votes have gone to the Democratic candidate the last few elections anyway.
To make a difference, the c
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Exactly. What possible motivation could red states or swing states have to approve it? Do the swing states really think that having presidential candidates ignore them in future elections in favor of the big population centers would be good for them?
And if it is approved, any state whose own popular vote conflicted with the national popular vote would immediat
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If you get rid of the Electoral College, you might as well get rid of the Senate.
I like your way of thinking!
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I really hope you are unsuccessful in furthering these goals. While the present situation is far from perfect I think underestimate just how harmful it would be to our national interest if you let the masses in inner cities ignore the needs of the bread basket of this nation; I assure you disaster will ensue.
Looking at things strictly in terms of population and dollar GDP output the people of Nebraska might not seem over represented but cheap corn and wheat is where the burrito coverings, that all those te
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Not likely. What more likely will happen is that Google, Facebook and Amazon will join forces and become one company.
Why do you mention those companies together as if they were similar?
Facebook and Google are, fundamentally ad companies. They monetize user data, in one way or another. The users are not their customers, the advertisers are. They are both effective monopolies in several areas.
Amazon is a retailers with less than 10% market share, plus a cloud hosting company. Their users are their customers.
Do Amazon and Facebook have anything in common beyond "success" and "on the internet"?
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The only difference is that it sells the things it advertises, too, while the other two don't.
Really? (Score:5, Insightful)
Having Disney and Comcast own all the media is fine but breaking up a company offering a free product is the tipping point?
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Nope, that's not fine either. It's awful.
But besides, with Facebook, you're not the consumer, you are the product, to be sold to their advertisers and data miners.
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Having Disney and Comcast own all the media is fine but breaking up a company offering a free product is the tipping point?
If you actually listened to Chris Hughes he was suggesting that pretty much all the big market share companies needed to be broken up for antitrust and healthy free market competition reasons. Facebook was just the focus because of his past relationship with the company.
Although I think you need to consider the world wide market if you are going to start breaking up companies that have large market shares in the US. China in particular, but Saudi Arabia and other competitive countries all have very large
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The fact that money doesn't change hands between two parties does not mean that something is free.
But even if we say that it's free, so what? Free products can be just as dangerous, just as illegal, or just as anti-competitive as for-pay products, sometimes even more so. Companies illegally flood markets with free/cheap product to quash competition. Companies give away free products as a goodwill PR move/distraction to discourage scrutiny of their actual business, which may be far more illicit. Companies gi
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What leads you to that conclusion? I mean it's a nice thought and all, but the reality is nothing is being addressed, not even Facebook, you know a company that bought another as recently as 3 months ago without a regulator so much as batting an eye.
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We call Facebook "social media." Is it not "media"? The unique characteristic of Facebook is that its content is user created and a combination of push and pull communication, with a relatively low bar of entry for the average citizen. Quite different from Disney and Comcast. One might even suggest the FB platform has become the new public square.
So it does make sense to characterize it as a tipping point of some sort. IMHO how we treat FB represents how we move forward with the WWW in general. When does do
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"journalism" (Score:5, Interesting)
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The part that bothers me is the LAZINESS attitude of a lot of so called "news" sites. News sites have become lazy, simply posting tweets, FB posts, instagram posts etc... Instead of going out and actually FINDING the news, they will simply copy/paste things.
Perhaps we should be careful in labeling this behavior as "lazy", and remember the speed at which news sites must respond and deliver the news in the 21st Century.
We live in a NOW society. People expect to get their news in damn near real-time because the technology can pretty much deliver that. But the cheapest (and realistic) way to get that information in damn near real-time is to crowdsource it. Essentially it would be impossible to staff a company large enough globally and respond fast enough. Whil
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Perhaps we should be careful in labeling this behavior as "lazy", and remember the speed at which news sites must respond and deliver the news in the 21st Century.
No. Regurgitating a string of comments people made the day before on Twitter is explicitly lazy.
Maybe news sites should stop lying about being news sites and admit they're online gossip rags pandering to people seeking vapid entertainment.
What's really needed is a peer to peer alternative (Score:4, Insightful)
... something that can't be easily censored, something that isn't controlled by a few, distributed and with redundancy to limit information loss. Something like the freenetproject, but with more that adopt it.
sour grapes? (Score:3)
Is this just sour grapes, or is there some legitimate legal reason to break up Facebook? It's not the only social network in town, and it's losing users in the US (but gaining ground in other regions). How come we can let cable monopolies squash municipal internet providers, but we lose our minds when Facebook lets any one buy targeted advertisement?
Only two outcomes (Score:5, Insightful)
There can only be two outcomes, based past history (MySpace, etc), and on billion dollar attempts (Google+).
The first is that, given a long enough time (5-10 more years), Facebook will fall out of fashion to the point that some competitor will take its place. This cannot be achieved by raw power or money (Google+ proved this), but only by an organic social movement that we cannot predict at this point. This will probably have a generational element (the current teen generation already avoids Facebook, for example). This is inevitable - however, because FB is so large, and more importantly, because its user base contains so many middle-aged and elderly users, the time it takes for this to happen will be much longer than what we have seen in the past with networks like MySpace. The older and non-technophile demographic have no motivation to seek out new or better technologies just for the sake of improvement. They are adverse to switching away from familiar technology as the learning curve can be frustrating to adapt to something new. Facebook has this going in its favor (as long as the general user experience remains roughly consistent).
The second is a government breakup, which would force openness of Facebook in some way - portable user accounts, the ability for 3rd parties to post without total control by FB (which they have just leveraged in a HUGE way in the last year, allowing only proven business entities with FB approved "apps" to be able to automatically post content to Facebook). Facebook still will not die the final death this way - only the social movement type demise I described above, as with MySpace, can result in its total death. A government breakup of Facebook would actually be good for Facebook, as they would retain some lower-level technological and architectural control that is independent of the social side (people don't know or care what technology is underpinning what they do, only what the glossy layer on top represents). So you might go to slashdot.org and read and post in a very branded environment, but the data is actually moving through Facebook's architecture (protocols, universal user accounts, etc), albeit in a more private and secure way that is more open.
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There is already a generational shift. Facebook saw it coming, so they bought Instagram. They'll continue this pattern for each shift. Regulation could help prevent these purchases from happening.
More regulation isn't really the issue (Score:5, Insightful)
These platforms are as big as they are because of regulation, not for lack of it. Its entirely a function of the Communications Decency Act that facebook is able to be anything like what they are. Their would be not problem with a monoploy if they were truly required to be a neutral platform (they are not so required). However they would not exist without the law in the first place.
facebook and other sites are shield from responsibility for libel and harassment as well as other claims no other publisher enjoys immunity from. If the NYT runs something even on its editorial page that contains blatant falsehoods for example about me - I could sue them as well as the author. If someone posts something entirely false and facebook published it for some reason Congress thinks facebook should be protected. Its these very protections that enable facebook to operate on the scale that it does and be what it is.
If they want to be publishers with editorial control let them; but make them responsible for the content and the policing their of along with the liability for failure to do so. If they want to be an 'open platform' fine let them do that to but then deny them editorial control so we don't have to worry so much about the censorship and speech issues.
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Newspapers are curated and edited by humans. They are directly responsible then for the content. Facebook is user submitted, like many websites, and that content is not Facebooks responsibility.
Surely you can see the difference. I mean nobody is that obtuse.
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Newspapers are curated and edited by humans. They are directly responsible then for the content. Facebook is user submitted, like many websites, and that content is not Facebooks responsibility.
Surely you can see the difference. I mean nobody is that obtuse.
If Facebook isn't responsible for their content, then care to tell me why they're running a legal torture camp? They're forcing real people to sit down and sift through the most vile mindbending shit humans can possibly imagine in order to police the content and censor if necessary.
Surely you can see what responsibility looks like. I mean, nobody is that obtuse.
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If the NYT runs something even on its editorial page that contains blatant falsehoods for example about me - I could sue them as well as the author.
Yes, you can sue them, but you cannot sue the company that makes their printing presses, or the company that hosts their website, or the power company that powers their office, or the paper boy that delivers their newspapers.
Surely you can see that a publisher and an online social media platform are entirely different kinds of entities.
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No I can't see that and I don't think you are correct. A publisher sources content and produces a publication. They generate revenue usually off either sales of said publication or advertisements in said publication. Usually space in said publication is marketed to advertisers based on what demographic the content attracts. This actually seems like pretty much EXACTLY what facebook does!
The only difference and frankly its incumbent upon you to show this is a distinction that matters is facebook sources c
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You nailed it. Well put. I wish I had a more substantial post to write, but I couldn't do much more than restate your excellent points.
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TLDR: He is butthurt.
It is a publicly traded company... make an appeal to the shareholders.
Kind of hard to do when Zuckerberg owns 60% and his buddies own an additional 10%. Not really sure what you expect the other 30% to be able to do....
just shut it down (Score:2)
I agree (Score:3, Insightful)
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Perhaps the individual States could take over some of the responsibilities? Nah, never mind... crazy idea.
Dear Mark . . . (Score:2)
Hey pal, I know these are hard times. You've done everything right, made billions, have thousands of little people doing your bidding, and you're still young with endless possibilities. Dude you're famous!
And yet nobody loves you. I know, it's not like you screwed up the nation, and many others, like that guy in the White House; and yet he still has friends.
Listen buddy, I'm here for you. As long as you hold those shares and keep them growing, as long as your generosity to insiders holds up; I'm your friend
Co-Founder.... (Score:3)
Co-Founder who still has shares in Facebook, wants it broken up so Mark has less control..... and he would have more control ...
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Chris Hughes liquidated his FB shares in 2012.
Power corrupts.. (Score:3)
Money is power.
So is knowledge (information, in this case).
Zuckerberg/Facebook have too much of all the above.
Really, it would be best to burn it all to the ground, and salt the earth where it stood, to prevent it from cropping up again.
Breaking it into smaller pieces and instituting legislation protecting people's data and overall privacy would be a good start.
Link to Op-Ed (Score:5, Informative)
TL;DR? Here's the editorial board's summary [nytimes.com]. The NYTimes has been having a whole month of opinion pieces related to privacy [nytimes.com], there's plenty to chew on.
Yes, the government *should* be broken up. (Score:2)
I got nothing to say, I just thought that would've been a way cooler response from Facebook.