Article snippet: A call to break up Facebook from one of the company's co-founders is bringing new momentum to the movement targeting Silicon Valley's giants. Chris Hughes published an op-ed in The New York Times on Thursday arguing that the company that he helped build as a college student at Harvard had grown too large and unaccountable. The article was a stunning rebuke from a former insider and made waves in the political world and across social media. “I think that blew open the conversation in an incredibly meaningful way,” said Sarah Miller, the deputy director of the Open Markets Institute, which has helped push antitrust questions about tech companies to the forefront over the past year and a half. “It's getting harder and harder to defend Facebook maintaining its monopoly power,” she added. In the op-ed, Hughes said that he was worried about the amount of power Facebook had amassed over the world’s communications and how MORE, his former roommate and co-founder, had complete control over the company. “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,” Hughes wrote. After the article ran Thursday morning, Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), one of Facebook’s biggest critics in Congress, echoed the call for a breakup. “Being big is not illegal. It's the misuse of that bigness and market dominance such as Facebook has been doing by acquiring innovati... Link to the full article to read more
Co-founder's call to break up Facebook energizes its critics | TheHill
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