Washington — Facebook quickly rejected a call from co-founder Chris Hughes on Thursday to split the world’s largest social media company in three, while legislators urged the US justice department to launch an antitrust investigation.
Facebook rejected Hughes’ call for WhatsApp and Instagram to be made into separate companies, and said the focus should instead be on regulating the internet. Zuckerberg will be in Paris on Friday to discuss internet regulation with French President Emmanuel Macron. The letter also asked questions about consumer privacy protections and if it had information about users’ creditworthiness.
Facebook lost several executives after a bruising series of privacy and disinformation scandals since 2016. The founders of Instagram and WhatsApp have left, as has the executive who took over WhatsApp in 2018. Despite its scandals, the company’s core business has proven resilient. Facebook has blown past earnings estimates in the past two quarters and its stock price barely budged in response to Hughes’ opinion piece.
Representative Ro Khanna, a California Democrat, said in a statement he agreed in retrospect that US regulators should not have approved Facebook’s acquisition of Instagram and WhatsApp.
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Newsdeck: Facebook co-founder says it is time to break up the companyMay 9 (Reuters) - Facebook Inc co-founder and former Mark Zuckerberg roommate Chris Hughes has called for the break up of the social network in an opinion piece in the New York Times.
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