That’s not from a privacy activist or politician. It was written by Chris Hughes, who co-founded Facebook with his Harvard roommate Mark Zuckerberg in the early 2000s.
In a very lengthy op-ed for the New York Times published on Thursday, Hughes officially joined the growing calls to break up the social network. While Hughes hasn’t worked at the company for a decade, the former Facebook spokesperson might now be the strongest voice to make the case
Even when people want to quit Facebook, they don’t have any meaningful alternative, as we saw in the aftermath of the Cambridge Analytica scandal. Worried about their privacy and lacking confidence in Facebook’s good faith, users across the world started a “Delete Facebook” movement. According to the Pew Research Center, a quarter deleted their accounts from their phones, but many did so only temporarily. I heard more than one friend say, “I’m getting off Facebook altogether — thank God for Instagram,” not realizing that Instagram was a Facebook subsidiary. In the end people did not leave the company’s platforms en masse. After all, where would they go
“As a result of all this, would-be competitors can’t raise the money to take on Facebook,” explains Hughes. “Investors realize that if a company gets traction, Facebook will copy its innovations, shut it down or acquire it for a relatively modest sum.”
Tech Yard 