FaceBook Co-Founder: It's Time to Break Up FaceBook. American Culture Cannot Have a Monopolistic Censor.

Yup.

Chris Hughes, the Harvard roommate of and co-founder of Facebook with Mark Zuckerberg, writes in a piece for the New York Times that "it is time to break up Facebook."

"America was built on the idea that power should not be concentrated in any one person, because we are all fallible," writes Hughes. "That's why the founders created a system of checks and balances." Hughes explains that because Zuckerberg has a 60 percent control of Facebook’s voting shares, "Mark alone can decide how to configure Facebook's algorithms to determine what people see in their News Feeds, what privacy settings they can use and even which messages get delivered."
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Hughes sees Zuckerberg's "unilateral control over speech" as "the most problematic aspect of Facebook’s power."

"There is no precedent for his ability to monitor, organize and even censor the conversations of two billion people," he says. For this, Hughes is calling on the government to hold Zuckerberg accountable and believes current actions against Facebook, such as a $5 billion fine from the Federal Trade Commission aren’t enough to rein in Zuckerberg in. "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."

He also calls for an agency to regulate social media, with an emphasis on holding them to account regarding privacy.

posted by Ace of Spades at 05:02 PM

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