Please break up Facebook, cofounder asks regulators

Enlarge / Mark Zuckerberg and Chris Hughes on Harvard's campus in 2004, well before Facebook started taking over the world. (credit: Rick Friedman/Corbis via Getty Images)

Facebook cofounder Chris Hughes isn't just idly wondering if regulators might break up the tech behemoth he helped launch. He's going on a personal tour, meeting with state and federal officials to lay out in detail the way he thinks it could be done.

Hughes has met with members of Congress, the Justice Department's Antitrust Division, the Federal Trade Commission, and the office of New York Attorney General Letitia James to make a detailed case arguing Facebook is too big for its own good, according to separate reports from The Washington Post and The New York Times.

The breakup tour went public in May, when Hughes penned a lengthy op-ed in The New York Times saying his former colleague Mark Zuckerberg wielded too much power. "I'm disappointed in myself and the early Facebook team for not thinking more about how the News Feed algorithm could change our culture, influence elections and empower nationalist leaders," Hughes wrote at the time. "And I'm worried that Mark has surrounded himself with a team that reinforces his beliefs instead of challenging them."

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