Facebook Co-Founder Chris Hughes Plea For Facebook To Break Up

Just 7 days ago, Chris Hughes wrote and uploaded an opinion post on NY Times which has gained much attention with the latest privacy scandal. Chris started by telling a time when he met Mark 2 years ago in Mark’s residence. They had normal conversations and Chris bid them farewell. This was, however, before the time when Mark’s and Facebook reputation took a ‘nose-dive’.

The founder of possibly the most powerful and monopolizing social media company in the world was the same human Chris remembers as a friend 15 years ago. However, he calls out to the ‘unchecked power’ of Mark that makes everything so ‘problematic’. And Mark, despite being the owner of three giant social media platforms, Whatsapp, Facebook and Instagram, have the sole power to turn the table in a board meeting. Because they are so powerful, they beat their competitors by blocking, acquiring or, more ruthlessly, blocking them out.

Chris did not consider the chances of how big this project that started from a small dorm room could become. The giant corporation is now being ruled in an ‘un-American’ way and this danger should have taken precedent. Meanwhile, Mark seems to have a trusted team of people with the same motivation as his, none to challenge the status quo.

Facebook alone has more than 2.3 billion active users and comparing this to YouTube with 1.9 billion users, Mark’s company ranks first in dominating the social media world. Yes, ‘Mark has always used the world domination’ when it comes to motivating the small team to grow. But now that it’s come so close to reality, no matter how we run and dread it, destiny still arrives.

Chris says it’s ironic how people would talk about escaping from Facebook into the clutch of Instagram. It’s like jumping from the palm of your left hand to your right; both of them are owned by Facebook. Chris points out the fact that Facebook owns three major social media platforms as ‘F.T.C’s biggest mistake’. It allows Facebook an easy pathway to enter real-time messaging and control the circulation of photo networking.

Mark’s blatant thirst of growth and domination was shown in how he blocks Vine as well as copying Snapchat’s feature that became a huge success. This gave the informal slogan that everyone knows: “Don’t be too proud to copy.”

If anyone has not realized it yet, we haven’t seen the rise of a new social media company since 2011, no matter how good an idea is. Investors are discouraged because when something good comes up and begin to gain fame, “Facebook will copy its innovations, shut it down or acquire it for a relatively modest sum,” Hughes wrote.

Hughes reminds that breaking up Facebook might not be enough and while he might have liquidated his shares of Facebook since 2012 and has not been working there since a decade ago, he wants to ‘take responsibility for not sounding the alarm earlier.’