Zuckerberg responds to co-founder Hughes’s op-ed

Facebook’s co-founder Steve Hughes called for Facebook’s breakup in his recent op-ed in The New York Times. His main argument was that Zuckerberg controls too much power through the mere size and reach of Facebook, that can influence politics as well as the economy.

Zuckerberg has responded saying, “When I read what he wrote, my main reaction was that what he’s proposing that we do isn’t going to do anything to help solve those issues. So I think that if what you care about is democracy and elections, then you want a company like us to be able to invest billions of dollars per year like we are in building up really advanced tools to fight election interference.”

His argument, in essence, is that the size of Facebook does not affect the issues of privacy, safety and misinformation, and breaking up the company would hinder efforts to safeguard social networks. He says that the mere size of Facebook is what benefits the public and has the potential to resolve privacy concerns. “Our budget for safety this year is bigger than the whole revenue of our company was when we went public earlier this decade. A lot of that is because we’ve been able to build a successful business that can now support that. You know, we invest more in safety than anyone in social media.”

Read more about what he had to say here.