“The Biggest Winners Would Be The American People”: Facebook Co-Founder Adds to Bipartisan Momentum to Break Up Facebook

Washington, D.C. — Open Markets applauds Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes for publishing a courageous and groundbreaking essay in the New York Times advocating that the corporation he helped create should be broken up.

The Federal Trade Commission, as the policeman for America’s markets, should act to restructure Facebook to ensure it serves the political and economic interests of all Americans.

Open Markets reiterates our call for the FTC to prohibit Facebook from acquiring additional companies for at least five years and to reverse its approvals of Facebook’s WhatsApp and Instagram acquisitions. We also call for developing interoperability standards to give new social media start-ups a chance to succeed, prohibiting Facebook’s attempts to enter into the banking and payments space, imposing privacy regulations similar to those implemented by the German Federal Cartel Office, and banning Facebook from engaging in price or terms discrimination. It is time to end Facebook’s dominance.

We are encouraged by the growing consensus that Facebook’s monopoly is a danger to democracy and must be addressed urgently. We agree with Hughes, who wrote:

“America was built on the idea that power should not be concentrated in any one person, because we are all fallible. That’s why the founders created a system of checks and balances. They didn’t need to foresee the rise of Facebook to understand the threat that gargantuan companies would pose to democracy.”

For additional resources, please see:

Sarah Miller and Matt Stoller in the Guardian: Facebook is Violating our Privacy. Where are the Cops?

Sally Hubbard on CNN Business: Facebook's new plan doesn't protect your privacy, and neither does the FTC

Barry Lynn and Matt Stoller in the Guardian: “Facebook Must Be Restructured, The FTC Should Take These Nine Steps Now”

Sarah Miller in USA Today: Break up Facebook: Latest hack proves it's a dangerous monopoly that a fine won't fix.

Barry Lynn in the Guardian:

Google and Facebook are strangling the free press to death. Democracy is the loser.