Facebook Co-Founder Chris Hughes Calls For Facebook's Breakup... But Seems Confused About All The Details

Facebook Co-Founder Chris Hughes Calls For Facebook's Breakup... But Seems Confused About All The Details

5 years ago
Anonymous $9jpehmcKty

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20190509/12233042171/facebook-co-founder-chris-hughes-calls-facebooks-breakup-seems-confused-about-all-details.shtml

Lots of folks are talking about a new opinion piece in the New York Times by Chris Hughes, one of the small group of college buddies of Mark Zuckerberg who are often called "co-founders" of the company. Hughes left pretty early, and has dabbled (unsuccessfully) in politics and (unsuccessfully) in media. The key point of the opinion piece is obvious from the title: It's Time to Break Up Facebook.

It is absolutely worth reading and thinking about. It's also does not make a very compelling argument. It does seem to be having people who already think Facebook should be broken up declaring that it's a compelling argument, but that's because it's confirming their prior feelings, not because of anything in the article. To be clear: I'm actually on the fence about the idea of breaking up Facebook. I've previously discussed why I think Elizabeth Warren's plans to break up all of the big internet companies doesn't make sense, but as a short version, my main issue is that I'm not sure any of these plans actually solve the problems people think they will solve (for a debate on this, listen to my podcast with Cory Doctorow where he and I disagreed over this point).