"Facebook Should be Broken up"

A founder of Facebook says it should be broken up (Opinion: Chris Hughes, 'It’s Time to Break Up Facebook' New York Times May 9, 2019).

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.[...] Mark’s influence is staggering, far beyond that of anyone else in the private sector or in government. He controls three core communications platforms — Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp — that billions of people use every day. Facebook’s board works more like an advisory committee than an overseer, because Mark controls around 60 percent of 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. He sets the rules for how to distinguish violent and incendiary speech from the merely offensive, and he can choose to shut down a competitor by acquiring, blocking or copying it. The government must hold Mark accountable.

But of course facebook's extent and influence (positive and negative) goes well beyond the USA.