The last time I saw Mark Zuckerberg was in the summer of 2017, just a few months before the Cambridge Analytica scandal broke. We met at Facebook's offices in Menlo Park and drove to his house. We spent an hour or two together with his toddler daughter walking around. We talked mostly about politics, and a little bit about Facebook, and our families. As the sun was fading, I had to leave. I hugged Priscilla (Mark Zuckerberg's wife) and said goodbye to Mark.

Since then, Mark's personal reputation and Facebook's reputation have plummeted. Facebook’s blunders dominated the headlines — the sloppy approach to privacy that dumped the data of tens of millions of users to a political consulting firm; the slow response to Russian operatives, violent rhetoric and fake news; Unlimited power.

It's been 15 years since we co-founded Facebook at Harvard, and I haven't worked at the company in 10 years. But I feel a sense of anger, a sense of responsibility.

Mark is still the guy who escorted his parents out of the dorm common room and hugged them at the start of his sophomore year; still the procrastinator for exam revision; still the guy who fell in love with his wife-to-be while standing in line for the bathroom at a party; The last person who could have afforded a better house and still slept on a tatami mattress in a small apartment.

In other words, he is a real person. But it's his humanity that makes his unchecked power a problem.

Mark's influence is staggering, far exceeding that of any other private sector or government individual. He controls three core communication platforms - Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, which billions of people use every day. Facebook's board is more of an advisory committee than an overseer, since Mark controls about 60 percent of the voting power. Only Mark can decide how to configure Facebook's algorithm, which can decide what users can see in their newsfeed, what privacy settings users can use, and even what messages can be sent. He has established rules for distinguishing violent and incendiary speech from offensive speech, and he can choose to acquire, block or copy competitors so that they are no longer competitive.

Mark is a kind and nice guy. But it irritates me that his focus on growth leads him to sacrifice safety and civility for hits. I am disappointed in myself and the early Facebook team that we did not seriously consider how the News Feed algorithm would change our culture, influence elections, and empower nationalist leaders. I worry that the group around Mark will only reinforce his beliefs rather than challenge them.

The government must hold Mark accountable. For too long, lawmakers have marveled at Facebook's explosive growth while ignoring their responsibility to protect Americans and maintain a free and competitive marketplace. Now, the Federal Trade Commission could impose a $5 billion fine on Facebook at any moment, but that won't be enough, and Facebook has yet to appoint an executive to oversee privacy issues. After Mark testified in Congress last year, there should be calls for him to really face up to his mistakes, but the lawmakers who questioned him were ridiculed for being too old and out of touch with how technology works. That's the impression Mark wants Americans to have, because it means little will change.

We are a nation with a tradition of controlling monopolies, no matter how well-intentioned their leaders may be. Mark's powers are unprecedented and un-American.

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Mark Zuckerberg testifies on Capitol Hill in 2018. Credit: Tom Brenner/The New York Times

We already have the tools to rein in Facebook's domination, we just seem to have forgotten them.

America was founded on the idea that power should not be concentrated in any one person, because we are all fallible. That's why the Founding Fathers created the separation of powers. They didn’t need to foresee the rise of Facebook to understand the threat to democracy from monopoly corporations. Both Jefferson and Madison were staunch followers of Adam Smith, who believed that monopoly hindered competition and that competition fostered innovation and economic growth.

A century later, in response to the rising oil, railroad, and bank trusts of the Gilded Age, Republican John Sherman of Ohio argued in Congress: "If we cannot tolerate the king as a political Power exists, and we should not suffer a king to regulate the production, transportation, and sale of any necessities of life. If we do not submit to an emperor, we should not submit to a trade dictator with the power to prevent competition and the power to set prices." 1890 , the "Sherman Antitrust Act" was introduced, prohibiting monopolies. In the 20th century, more legislation followed and more regulatory structures were created to promote competition and hold the largest corporations accountable. The Department of Justice broke up monopolies like Standard Oil and AT&T.

For many people today, it's hard to imagine the government getting much right, let alone breaking up a company like Facebook. This is no coincidence.

Beginning in the 1970s, a small but dedicated group of economists, lawyers, and policymakers sowed the seeds of our cynicism. Over the next 40 years, they funded a network of think tanks, academic journals, social clubs, academic centers, and media outlets, teaching a new generation of young people that private interests should take precedence over public interests. Their credo is simple: "free" markets are dynamic and productive, while governments are bureaucratic and unproductive. By the mid-1980s, they had largely succeeded in putting vigorous antitrust enforcement efforts into the history books.

That shift, combined with business-friendly tax and regulatory policies, ushered in a period of mergers and acquisitions in the U.S. economy that created several megacorporations. Over the past 20 years, more than 75 percent of U.S. industries, from aviation to pharmaceuticals, have experienced increased monopoly levels, and the average size of public companies has tripled. The result is a decline in entrepreneurship, stagnant productivity growth, higher prices, and fewer choices for consumers.

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Facebook and the establishment of its dominance

Back in 2005, I was in Facebook's first office and I read the news: Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation to buy social networking site Myspace for $580 million . The overhead light was off, and a group of us were typing on the keyboard, our 21-year-old faces half-lit by the light from the screen. I heard a "wow," and then the news spread silently across the room via AOL Instant Messenger. My eyes widened. real? $580 million?

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As social media becomes big business, journalists have been paying close attention

From our earliest days, Mark has used the word "reign" to describe our ambitions, without any hint of irony or humility. At the time, we competed with many social networks, not just Myspace, but Friendster, Twitter, Tumblr, LiveJournal, and others. The pressure to beat them spurred innovation and led to many of Facebook's unique features:Simple and beautiful interface, news feed, connection to real world identity, and more.

It was this competitive drive that led Mark to acquire dozens of other companies over the years, including Instagram in 2012 and WhatsApp in 2014. There is nothing immoral or suspicious about these moves in my opinion.

I remember, during the summer of the Myspace sale, Mark and I were driving one night after get off work to the house we lived with a couple of engineers and designers. I was in the passenger seat of this Infiniti SUV that our investor, Peter Thiel, had bought for Mark to replace the dodgy used car that Mark had been driving.

As we turned right on Valparaíso Boulevard, Mark acknowledged the overwhelming pressure he felt: “Now that we’ve hired so many people…” he said slowly, “We really can’t afford to fail.”

Facebook went from a project developed in our dorm rooms and chaotic vacation homes to a serious company with lawyers and human resources departments. We have about 50 employees who live off Facebook. I stared out the window and thought:

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Chris Hughes (right) and Mark Zuckerberg (left) on the Harvard campus in 2004. Image Copyright: Rick Friedman

More than a decade later, Facebook has reigned supreme. It's valued at $5 trillion and accounts for more than 80% of global social networking revenue by my estimate. It's a powerful monopoly that eclipses all competitors and wipes competition out of the social networking category. That explains why, even in 2018, a year full of negative headlines, Facebook's earnings per share rose a staggering 40% from the year before. (Benefits: In 2012, I liquidated my stake in Facebook, and I didn't directly invest in any social media companies.)

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Data source: Hootsuite and We Are Social reports published on DataReportal.com; Graphics: The New York Times

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The FTC's blunder

Facebook's dominance is no historical accident. The company's strategy is clearly one of beating all competitors, with regulators and governments tacitly, and sometimes explicitly, approving. In 2011, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission issued a consensus ruling that prohibited Facebook from sharing any private information other than what users had already agreed to. It was one of the few attempts by the government to rein in the company. Facebook largely ignored the verdict. Last month, the company predicted on an earnings call that it would need to pay a fine of up to $5 billion as punishment for its negligence -- and that's a minor penalty. The very next day, Facebook shares soared 7%, adding $30 billion in market value, six times the amount of the fine.

The FTC's biggest mistake was allowing Facebook to buy Instagram and WhatsApp. In 2012, new platforms started to catch up with Facebook because they were apps designed for smartphones, where Facebook was still struggling. Mark responded by buying them, and the FTC approved the acquisition.

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In 2016, Mark Zuckerberg presented the company's 10-year roadmap at a Facebook conference. Credit: Eric Risberg/AP

When Facebook hadn’t achieved dominance, it used its monopoly to shut out rivals or copy (to put it bluntly, steal) their technology.

The News Feed algorithm reportedly prioritizes videos on Facebook over those from rivals such as YouTube and Vimeo. In 2012, Twitter launched a site called Vine that offered six-second videos. On the same day, Facebook blocked a feature on Vine that allowed users to search for their Facebook friends on Vine. The move stymied Vine's growth, and it had to close its doors after four years.

Snapchat is also regarded as a thorn in the side and a thorn in the flesh by Facebook. Snapchat's Stories and ever-changing messaging options pose a serious threat to Facebook and Instagram. Unlike Vine, Snapchat isn't integrated into Facebook's ecosystem, so there's no obvious way for Facebook to trip up the company or keep it out. So Facebook simply copied its model.

Facebook's copy proved to be very successful, while Snapchat suffered. In an all-hands meeting in 2016, Mark told Facebook employees not to let pride get in the way of users getting what they want. According to Weird magazine, "Zuckerberg's message in this move became an unofficial Facebook slogan: 'Don't be too proud to copy.'"

(And there's little regulators can do about it: While Snapchat has patented it, copyright law doesn't apply to abstract concepts themselves.)

Therefore, potential competitors cannot raise funds to challenge Facebook. Because investors realize that if a company is just emerging, Facebook will copy its innovation or buy it for a relatively modest price. So despite a continuing economic expansion, growing interest in high-tech start-ups, a surge in venture capital, and a growing public antipathy toward Facebook, there hasn't been a major social network that has come close to rivaling Facebook since the fall of 2011. The company appears.

As the market becomes more concentrated, the number of startups is also declining. The same is true in other high-tech areas dominated by a single company, such as search — which is controlled by Google, and e-commerce — which is controlled by Amazon. But at the same time, in areas where there is no monopoly domination - such as in workplace productivity (Slack, Trello, Asana), urban transportation (Lyft, Uber, Lime, Bird) and cryptocurrencies (Ripple, Coinbase, Circle) — but there are many innovations.

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dead market

Since the 1970s, courts have become increasingly hesitant to break up companies or block mergers unless there is sufficient evidence that consumers were forced to pay too much. But the narrow reliance on whether consumers have experienced price gouging has left courts open to considering the full costs of market dominance. It fails to recognize that we also want markets to be competitive to encourage innovation and maintain a dominant position. This may have run counter to the trend of antitrust law at the time. AT&T and IBM were hit with two major antitrust lawsuits in the 1980s, arguing that they used their size advantage to stifle innovation and suppress competition.

As Columbia University law professor Tim Wu writes, "The intent to place a heightened focus on price impacts as the standard by which all antitrust conduct is measured has actually had a somewhat negative impact on the law itself."

Facebook is a perfect example of how to reverse this trend, because Facebook makes money from advertising targeted to users, which means that users do not need to pay to use the service. But it's not actually free, and certainly not harmless.

Facebook's business model is based on grabbing as much attention as possible, encouraging people to create and share more about who they are and who they want to be. In fact, what Facebook harvests is our data and attention, so no matter how you measure it, the price we pay is not cheap.

I was part of the original News Feed team (the patent has my name on it), and the product that now captures billions of hours of attention each year and captures an unknown amount of data. Facebook users spend an average of one hour a day on the platform; Instagram users spend at least 53 minutes a day browsing pictures and videos. In the process, they naturally generate a lot of data — in addition to likes, but also how long they watch a particular video — which Facebook uses to optimize its ads for specific users. Facebook also collects data from partner companies and apps without the knowledge of most users, according to tests by The Wall Street Journal.

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Mark Zuckerberg demonstrated the new features at a conference last month. Credit: Amy Osborne/AFP - Getty Images

While it was my own choice, I felt like I had no choice. Facebook has infiltrated every corner of our lives, voraciously sucking our attention and data, and there is nothing we can do about it except grab it.

I have to say with regret that the vibrant marketplace that once drove Facebook and other social media companies to compete to deliver better products has practically disappeared. Not only does this mean fewer opportunities for today’s startups to develop healthier, less exploitative social media platforms, it also means more brazen violations of sensitive issues such as privacy protection.

As recently as last month, Facebook appeared to be trying to cover up the scandal that it stored tens of millions of user passwords in plain text, which were exposed unprotected even to thousands of Facebook employees. Competition by itself doesn’t necessarily spur privacy — regulation is necessary to ensure accountability — but Facebook’s lock-in of the market makes it impossible for users to protest by moving to other platforms at all.

Facebook's biggest trouble is Mark's ability to unilaterally control speech.

Mark's unprecedented ability to monitor, organize and even censor the conversations of two billion people gives him the power to kill.

Facebook engineers write algorithms that select which users' comments or experiences end up in friends and family's news feeds. These algorithmic rules are not only highly targeted, but also so complex that many Facebook employees cannot understand them themselves. In other words, they have personally created a monster that they cannot control at all.

In 2014, these algorithmic rules were only intended to induce users to click on the title to increase traffic. By 2016, they were able to promote fringe political views and fake news in cyberspace, allowing Russian actors with ulterior motives to manipulate American voters. In January 2018, Mark announced that the algorithms favored non-news content shared between friends and news from "credible" sources, which his engineers preferred to see as "political, criminal, Tragedy" kind of thing, which confuses a lot of people.

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In Facebook's "war room," employees monitor election-related content that includes photos of Brazil's presidential candidates. Credit: Jeff Chiu/Associated Press

As if it wasn't enough for Facebook to appear opaque about its algorithm, last year we learned that Facebook executives had permanently deleted their information on the platform, citing concerns about the company's security. When I now look at my Facebook messages with Mark over the years, there is only a long list of my own words. Obviously, the words he once sent me have disappeared like a mud cow. (By the way, Facebook is now offering this feature to all users.)

The most extreme example of Facebook manipulating speech occurred in Myanmar in late 2017. In an interview with Vox, Mark said he personally made the decision to delete private messages from Facebook users encouraging genocide. "I remember one Saturday morning, I got a call," he said, "and we found out that users were trying to spread sensational information on both sides of the conflict through Facebook Messenger, basically inciting Muslims to say, 'Hey, Buddhists want to challenge Thing, hurry up and grab your dick and go somewhere.' And the same thing with the Buddhists."

Then Mark made a phone call: "Delete all this information." While most would agree that his decision was justified, it is deeply disturbing that he made it without reporting it to any independent source. Authorities or authorities are responsible. In theory, if Facebook's leadership doesn't like the information about an American, it could just as easily remove it altogether.

Mark used to insist that Facebook was just a "social tool," a neutral platform where people could communicate as they wished. But now, he recognizes that Facebook, while a platform, cannot be neutral because it inevitably has to make decisions about values. The company's own lawyers have argued in court that Facebook classifies itself as a member of the publishing industry, naturally entitled to First Amendment protections.

Of course, no one at Facebook headquarters deliberately chooses which news stories every American wakes up to. But they do get to decide if it's an article from a well-known media outlet, a video from The Daily Show, a photo from a friend's wedding, or even an incendiary manifesto to kill.

Mark knows the weight of that power, and he's seeking new strategies to try to lessen it. He shifted Facebook's focus toward encouraging private, encrypted messages that Facebook employees can't see and therefore have no control over. Second, he wants regulators and other industry executives to police themselves in a friendly manner.

Late last year, he proposed the creation of an independent committee to deal with the tough decisions social media platforms make about content moderation. Mark believes that it will provide independent review opinions for Facebook's decision, and if users disagree, they can appeal. But the committee's decision has no legal force, as companies will participate voluntarily.

In March, he wrote in a Washington Post op-ed, “I agree with lawmakers who often tell me that we have too much power over what our users say. ’ He’s even gone further than before, proactively calling for more government regulation — not just of speech, but of privacy and interoperability, which previously ensured consumers would be able to move their profiles, friendships, photos and Other data is transferred from this web platform to another web platform.

I don't think the original intention of these suggestions is malicious. But I do think it was a necessary gesture to prevent regulators from breaking up Facebook. Facebook is not afraid of more rules, it is afraid of antitrust investigations, and it is afraid of the responsibility that real government regulation will bring.

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U.S. government could break up Facebook with antitrust laws

In the summer of 2006, Yahoo (Yahoo) offered $1 billion to buy Facebook from us. I desperately want Mark to say yes. Even my small share in the company can make me very rich. For a 22-year-old student living on a scholarship from small-town North Carolina, the sums were unimaginable. I wasn't the only one who wanted Mark's nod - pretty much everyone in the company thought the same.

But talking about it publicly on Facebook is a no-no. When we finally got a chance to be alone, I asked Mark, "What do you think of Yahoo's proposal?" Instead, he shrugged and told me, "I don't know if I want to be the CEO of Yahoo." Officer Terry Semel."

Aside from a few odd jobs in college, Mark was almost never resigned to being subordinate to others, he was his own master. I'm not a big fan of the idea myself, but I wouldn't mind having a boss in exchange for a lot of money. Mark's drive was noticeably greater. No one can refuse the attraction of domination, and the busyness and fulfillment it brings is also unstoppable.

Mark Zuckerberg rang the Nasdaq opening bell on the day the company went public. Credit: Spencer Platt/Getty Images

Maybe Mark will never have a boss, but he needs to constantly examine the power in his hands. The U.S. government needs to do two things: break Facebook's monopoly, and then regulate the company to make it more accountable to the American people.

First, Facebook should be broken up into multiple companies. The FTC, with the cooperation of the Justice Department, could enforce antitrust laws by unwinding Facebook’s acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp — and banning such acquisitions for years to come. The FTC should have blocked these mergers in the first place, but it's not too late to act. Correcting bad decisions is not without precedent—as recently as 2009, Whole Foods settled an antitrust complaint by selling the Wild Oats brand and stores it acquired a few years earlier.

There is some evidence that we may be heading in that direction. Senator Elizabeth Warren has called for breaking up Facebook. In February, the FTC announced the creation of a task force to monitor competition among technology companies and review prior mergers.

How to break up Facebook? Facebook can be given a short period of time to spin off the Instagram and WhatsApp businesses, and the three companies will become separate companies and go public. Shareholders of Facebook could hold stock in the new company, but should spin off the management shares held by Mark and other top executives.

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There are many benefits to breaking up Facebook

Some economists doubt that breaking up Facebook would bring about the competition it imagines, since Facebook is a "natural" monopoly. Where natural monopolies would have been in areas like water systems and power grids, where the cost of entry is very high -- because you have to lay pipes or wires -- it's getting cheaper and cheaper to add each additional customer. In other words, monopoly is naturally produced, not caused by the illegal manipulation of enterprises. In addition, defenders of natural monopolies often claim that natural monopolies benefit consumers because firms can provide services at a lower cost than any other new entrant.

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The more users there are on Facebook, the more valuable it is. Credit: Jim Wilson/The New York Times

There are also concerns that the unraveling of Facebook or other U.S. tech companies could become a national security issue. Because advances in artificial intelligence require massive amounts of data and computing power, only big companies like Facebook, Google and Amazon can afford the investments, they say. If U.S. tech companies shrink, they could be at a disadvantage against foreign rivals.

These concerns, while serious, do not justify inaction. Even after the breakup, Facebook will remain a highly profitable business with billions of dollars to invest in new technologies, and a more competitive market will only encourage those investments. If foreign companies do get ahead, we can also get the government to invest in R&D and adopt trade policies—as it does today—to maintain our edge.

For the government, the cost of breaking up Facebook would be close to zero, while benefiting many people financially. Banning short-term acquisitions would effectively ensure competition and create a space to thrive, while digital advertisers would suddenly have multiple companies to choose from, not to mention eager investors.

Even Facebook shareholders may benefit, as has been proven in the past. Within a year of Standard Oil being broken up, the companies doubled in value and then quintupled a few years later. Ten years after AT&T was broken up in 1984, the new company that emerged from its ashes tripled in market value.

But the biggest winner will be the American people. Imagine what they could do in a competitive market from an online platform that offered a higher standard of privacy, one that charged a fee but had little to no advertising, and one that allowed users to customize and tweak as they wished. choose. No one knows exactly what Facebook's competitors will offer to differentiate themselves, and that's the crux of the matter.

The Justice Department faced similar issues in the 1950s, involving AT&T's social costs and benefits. AT&T had a monopoly on telephone service and telecommunications equipment. The government sued under antitrust laws, and the case ended with AT&T publishing its patents and not expanding into the nascent computer industry. This led to a burst of innovation, greatly increased the number of subsequent patents, and led to the rapid development of the semiconductor and modern computer industries. Without the competitive market brought about by antitrust action, we probably wouldn't be enjoying products like iPhones or laptops today.

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Protecting privacy and setting standards of speech

It's not enough to break up Facebook. We need a new agency mandated by Congress to regulate tech companies, and that new agency's top priority should be protecting privacy.

Europeans have made progress on privacy, with the General Data Protection Regulation, a law that guarantees users a minimum level of protection. A landmark U.S. privacy bill should spell out what kind of control Americans have over their digital information, requiring tech companies to provide clearer disclosures to users while giving the agency enough flexibility to act as it pleases. effective monitoring over time.

Finally, the agency should develop guidelines for acceptable speech on social media. The idea might seem un-American—we would never support government agencies censoring speech. But we've limited the yelling of "Fire" in a crowded theater, child pornography, remarks intended to incite violence, and false statements to manipulate stock prices. We're going to have to create similar standards to limit tech companies from doing wrong. These standards should of course be subject to court scrutiny, like any other restriction on speech. But the Constitution does not give anyone the right to harass another person or broadcast violence.

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In April 2018, nearly 100 lawmakers questioned Mark Zuckerberg over two days. Credit: Tom Brenner/The New York Times

Some wonder whether the effort to break up Facebook will prevail in court, given the hostility of federal courts to antitrust action, or whether this divided Congress will be able to muster enough consensus to create a social media regulator.

But even if the split and regulation are impossible to achieve immediate results, just the efforts to split and regulate will make these technology companies converge. The government's lawsuit against Microsoft -- illegally using its monopoly on the operating system to force users to use its Internet Explorer browser -- ended in 2001, when the George W. Bush administration dropped efforts to break up the company. However, that prosecution did effectively curb Microsoft's ambition to dominate the Internet.

Likewise, the Justice Department's prosecution of IBM in the 1970s for illegally maintaining its monopoly in personal computer sales ended in a stalemate. But in the process, IBM had to change many of its own behaviors. The company stopped bundling hardware and software and opted for an extremely open operating system design on PCs, while reducing the excessive control it had over suppliers in the past. Professor Wu writes in the book that the experience allowed IBM to avoid "any behavior that might appear to be anti-competitive, lest it increase the charges against it."

So, even with an unsuccessful lawsuit against Facebook, we can expect the same outcome.

Finally, the lawsuit against Facebook could also “kill the chicken for the monkey” and make other giants like Google and Amazon think twice about stifling competition in their industries for fear they might be next. Taking a broader view of the full cost of 'free' products could benefit the industry if the government uses this moment to reintroduce an effective competitive standard.

But if we don't act, Facebook's monopoly will become even stronger. With most of the world's personal communications in its hands, Facebook can mine that data for patterns and trends that will give it an advantage over rivals for decades to come.

I just hate myself for sounding the alarm too late. The financial rewards of working at Facebook completely changed the trajectory of my life, and even after I ran out of money, I watched the company grow in awe. The aftermath of the 2016 election and the Cambridge scandal made me realize the dangers of a Facebook monopoly.

The era of holding Facebook and other monopolies accountable may be beginning. The anger of the masses is growing too much to ignore, and new aspirants have emerged. On Capitol Hill, Rep. David Cicilline, R-D., has taken an interest in investigating monopoly issues, and Senators Amy Klobuchar and Ted Cruz have joined Sen. Warren in calling for more regulation. Economists like Jason Furman, the former chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, are talking openly about monopolies, and legal scholars like Lina Khan, Barry Lynn and Ganesh Sitaraman are plotting a fairer future.

The movements of these servants of the people, scholars and activists deserve our support. Mark Zuckerberg can't make Facebook better, but our government can.

*Chris Hughes, co-founder of Facebook, is now co-chair of the Economic Security Project and a senior advisor at the Roosevelt Institute.