From the New York Times are micro of our own. This is today Today, Chris heaved, a co founder of Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg, college ruling has written a column. In the times saying, Zuckerberg has become too powerful and their facebook should be broken up. My colleague Kevin, whose sits down with Chris to talk about why he speaking out it's Friday, may tenth were somebody half yeah what about us

There's one been Michael, you of your dad, I'm very happy. Do I just I just at a different level: gothic yeah you're that got bigger high. Ok, I'm Kevin! How are you crazy seconds ago, and has your data has been not to be totally honest, certainly store making headlines today? Is Facebook cofounder Chris Hughes, coming out in saying that government needs to hold mark Zuckerberg quote accountable, publish an open the New York Times. Hugh says Facebook is so powerful. It threatens american democracy in escaping our bed. In the New York Times, Hughes calls facebooks dominance a monopoly on what it actually says we are in now with a tradition of laying in Zimbabwe, is no matter how well intentioned the leaders of those companies may be. He says, Mark Zuckerberg power is unprecedented and american on american guys he's never been this spoken about

before I'm pretty sure he ain't gonna, get an invitation to Thanksgiving dinner at a mark, Zuckerberg House this year that sure I'll be. Let's just start from the very beginning. Tell me about the first time you met Mark Zuckerberg gosh. I don't remember the first time. First time we weren't best friends freshman year, but we were paired sophomore year with Dustin Moskowitz, thither, co founder a Facebook and Billy Olsson, and so the four of us ended up in this tiny room and Kirkland House with common room and then mark- and I had a tinier little bedroom that we shared and billion dust and had the third. So what you can actually shared a bedroom like you were,

Remit syndrome warrior. Yes, I think, when a lot of people think about that period in facebooks life, they think about the movie, the social network right, and they see mark as being the person that is portrayed as no movie kind of a cold calculating shhh unless very ambitious, very smart college student- I think that's fare well. What do you think like was the real mark from that time? From my experience of him, wasn't that he was corridor calculating then over now I mean he easy speaks in talks like an engineer sometimes. So I think that puts Folks off, but I don't know he was like you or me in college, he was more. Interested in engineering than we were, but he still you know he had crushes angry when in our day didn't show up he a class into clean.

I don't know it's hard to explain, but the idea that here we were patching some grand plot for world domination. Wasn't that's what people liked to say now about Facebook, but that was my experience did he understand what he was building understand the potential impact. If this thing worked out of what it might become. You know it's hard to say for all of us because, because the goalposts kept moving, so if you would have said

We understand that we are creating a network to help harboured students keep up with one another defiling and then two weeks later than that Ivy League students deftly and then a few months after that college students in general, etc. You get my point, so I think that there was a sense that we were on to something that we had tapped into a real desire for people to share information content stories about where they were to learn with their friends were up to, but I know I think the scale of what Facebook has become was foreseeable to anyone to me to him to any one in that phase. So famously drops out of school moves to Silicon Valley pursues Facebook. You stayed at Harvard and graduated.

I did. I was on financial aid, and I was the first in my family to go to really any kind of college like Harvard my mom's Pope schoolteacher dad was a paper salesman and the opportunity to be at Harvard was not one that I took lightly and I liked what we were doing at Facebook. It was interesting

on impact full, but it wasn t for me, then a mission like it was fur marking. There's always this almost missionary zeal that Mark had to connect the world to make it more open and connected and was a little bit harder for me to see why connection itself was necessarily good. Was even mean, so it never occurred to me that this would be my life's work in the way that nothing really on from market was more evident that this is something you really want to devote himself to write. So after college, you graduate you move out to Silicon Valley and you have shown Facebook did you feel that point of view and Mark were basically on the same page that his vision and mission, worried were lined with yours yeah. I we still sceptical that connection enough itself was a good thing and he and I debated dad. I can remember

continuing TIM debate that in long emails and things, if I remember correctly and two thousand and seven and two thousand eight, where did you disagree with it? But what was the debate over? I think it was around does since of of whether or not it was a good thing to be connected in and of itself a lot times. Facebook or other technologies get com two tools me, you know like a hammer. The tool is in good or bad. It's just how it's used. I don't know I've always Bell sceptical that I think some tools are not as good as other tools. You know a gun is different than a hammer

So just it feels like a little bit of a squishy argument to me that more tools is always better. Maybe maybe not so. I guess the nature of the disagreement was just more scepticism on my part that we can be quite is clear about the virtue or drawback of any tool, including what Facebook was during the time ran. I guess, if your skeptical of a tools for inherent goodness, you you're, seeing that it might be misused or that it could have implications beyond just being used for its intended purpose do feel you saw some of the risks back then I answered I mean yes, you can see some of the risk, but I cannot say that I foresaw all the things that happened. So I mean, are you can see that people were dressing up their profiles and spinning immense amount of time cure rating their favorite movies? So that's indicative. I want to look good just like a lot of

he's been allowed hunting, but with their wearing on a given day or make up or whatever, and so you see that in its like. Ok is this exacerbating vanity, gene in human nature, or is this just another way for people to be themselves? It wasn't clear at that time. So as hard to imagine

a lot of the problems like this to allowing people to express who they are or is it actually changing changing who they are, who they are, and at that time it seemed that it was more of just the expression. I think that's a much harder case doing now is interesting, so you, you left Facebook in two dozen seven February, her seven. Now. What was your relationship with mark like during that time? Were you guys in contact? We were. I went to his wedding, he came to ours, you know not particularly tight, I would even say we were close friends friends now your college remade, whose massively successful, who you're still friends with you, still care about- and I think you would say the same thing back in my direction- that cutting when did you feel like things started to go wrong. You know I don't know and there's not a single moment

was a dry for growth, which is natural. In some sense, every company wants to grow. That became dominant. I think in two thousand and eight and nine and ten in particular- and I worry that that obsession is partially wide reinforced the culture over there to emphasise growth over civility security thinking through some of the ethical implications or how this might actually play out afterwards. Vote will figure that out after we body can use it Ramey I've ever heard stories from that time in the company's history in and people always say, will mark didn't care about making money he cared about. I think that you think it's true, oh yeah, so this growth was not about

increasing the value of the company. What was it about and he was a drive to domination. I think was a drive to be the best. Sometimes I think the best entrepreneurs are the ones who just our sole driven that they want to. Make their company better and money is a piece of it make more money but ten vested in to their work, to have it be better and bigger and more powerful. So I I think that that was and is the drive more so than wealth. I dont these, but the money is ones and where you do think that that drive to serve domination comes from him. It's not people around him. It's part of the drive to greatness attract domination, yeah. What's fast forward a little bit twenty. Sixteen we have an election and I I have talked to a number of people serve at Facebook at the time who saw that as a turning point, who, in the day after the election, they woke up, they went into the office and they thought okay,

People are gonna. Take this out unless we are going to be seen as having played some role in Donald Trump selection. Did you recognise that as a moment of change for you personally, I think at first, you dont know if the extreme statements and outrage on Facebook was just a natural expression of something that had are always existed and Facebook was just giving it air so to speak, or Facebook was actually changing the social and cultural, local interactions by being out thereby being Facebook, and it was only really in the summer of twenty sixteen in the fall of twenty. Sixteen that I myself really became convinced that it wasn't just giving air to pre existing beliefs, but was actually giving cover two hateful statements and the people who are making them and did you bring that up with any one of the company or with mark and not went up?

I should have it wasn't clear to me what the solution was at the time and I wasn't seeing some you know, mark or other people at the company, frequently enough to just sort of express it as a percolating concern. It would have needed to be something like hey. I need you to pay attention to this thing and you know I wish I had. I wish I hadn't both the foresight and the courage to do that. I dont know if you really want to change anything, but I'd feel better about myself if I had so when he went in front of Congress last year to I defy about what had happened on Facebook and Russian interference, and everything like that. I wasn't really sure you were pay. Attention like there was this sort of story that he told about being a guy who had built something in his dorm room that had kind of accidentally become

This tremendously important platform that serve spiral out of control that they never plan to become the dominant. They just want to connect people with their friends and it sounds like you don't think that was an accurate characterisation of of what he was actually thinking at the time. Why that's an accurate characterisation that early days, but I think that Facebook is now worth nearly six hundred billion dollars- and there are two point, four billion people on the platform and what's happening now, is not what happened fifteen years ago, so this scale of what Facebook has become. Now I mean it's in comparable to what it was back then insert once you're that big once you're connecting that many people, and once there are elections on the line lives on the line, you know threaten genocide in some countries on the line that comes with a different

more of responsibility and ideas like ours. Just a few kids Endormeur, I'm trying to figure it out now, but that was true early on, but the world has changed. Facebook has changed and there's a different set of expectations. And do you feel like the version of the story, the mark told was intended to kind of like deflect responsibility or say: like look, I'm just I'm just a guy. This wasn't my fault. I'm down, I think he's taken some responsibility, but I think that Mark Zuckerberg cannot fix this problem and we are so train to look every time that Facebook fails to the next apology and the next prescription. For what to do that. We forget that we have the institutions in the tools to solve this problem. I think this is on government to pick up the mantle and to solve.

So tell me about how you got to the place where you decided to publish an opinion column in the New York Times, calling for the break up of Facebook. I mean what was that of a long road here, working on where to start so for the past few years. Working on this idea of creating a guaranteed income in the United States. I start having more more conversations with economists and with policymakers, folks in DC and What I heard a lot of the time was yes. This sounds like a good idea. As long as markets are competitive, dynamic and fair because, if they're not then what will happen is that a lot of this income will get eaten up in housing or health care. So, in other words, if you look at the evidence, there's been a massive increase in the concentration of corporate power in the United States

don't say that problem even provide people money all day, but it's not actually gonna help people make ends meet so that I trust it just more broadly and the concentration of power in corporate Amerika and read every paper. I could get my hand honorary book. I could find Erika and read every paper, I could get my hand on red every book. I could fine and the more read on it. The more eminent was impossible. Ten nowhere that Facebook is a monopoly. I mean we can.

What monopolies in in everything, from pharmaceuticals to beer to rental cars, but social networking. There is one company that has a locked down on the space, both from a revenue and from an attention perspective, and so, as I began to think about that, I felt I cash. I can't and don't want to talk about Anti trust and how to hold corporations accountable. Unless I tell my own story and talk about how We must hold Facebook accountable so fast forward to a lot more writing in research, in that I just begin writing for myself in January. And got in contact with, the other is the New York Times and then, and now I found the world, did you talk to mark before you publishes? I didn't know ass to my son.

Was in the summer twenty seventeen and then we had a few messages last year, but I didn't as interesting out so I ask that you had shown a version of this to someone a facebook before you published it and no, no totally out of the blue, but for them it was totally. The Abuja and I want to talk about. Let's get to the actual meat of the idea that there are a lot of them in there, and I know we don't have unlimited time while you're actually proposing in this column is not just criticism and regulation and scrutiny of Facebook, you actually calling for the company to be broken up like yes explain what that means. We have a long tradition in the United States of breaking up companies when they get too large and so of freezing mergers or putting a temporary ban on mergers. So it's been some time since we ve done this eighty and he was the last in the early nineties, but this can be done in specifically in facebooks case: what's happened instead,

have been administered and run independently, theyve independent teams inside the company there all overseen by the same corporate executive team. So what I am calling for is for the effort he see to say that The mistake made mistake by approving, though they may not ashamed when they approve those acquisitions and they should be unwound that Instagram and what's up should become publicly traded companies alongside Facebook Mark and other executives at Facebook now would have to divest their shares so that step one step too is. I do think that we need a regulatory agency that is actively invite loved in protecting users, privacy and setting guidelines around bullying, violence speech, and I think that we need both of these things together, because competition will help bring accountability, but you need some kind of floor

This is what we have with the FDA with airlines. We have it with pharmaceutical companies with the FDA on pudding, for the idea of doing something similar for Digital are so, let's take these two pieces really quickly. One is the competition part mean the traditional notion of breaking up companies and why you do it is because it harms consumer seen. Well, I wouldn't of that's traditional. That's a somewhat recent invention right, that's the sort of the late twentieth century version of Anti trust. Is you break companies up like eighty in tee and stand royal because their price fixing or their in some way making things? harder for consumers. The argument that you hear back from people who are defending Facebook as well. What's the harm hearing people love these services, their free to use their getting more, users every day you know you may

I agree that right. That is an argument that people may it is. I think an argument is getting harder and harder to make. I think that you know it is true that facebook, users and instagram users don't pay to use the service economically, but I think we pay quite a lot with our data and with our attention that is the business model of these companies they absorb as much of that as they can and they sell adds based on that now. The model itself some people would say is is fine. Some people would say it, isn't I personally don't love it, but the point is there's no other

Facebook I can pay to use to have no ads or to not collect out on me or to erase that there's no competition. So there's no ability for a new company to emerge into the argument that there's so much competition that Facebook is innovating and innovating. I think the last year in particular, we didn't see that when there was a huge outcry, the Deletefacebook movement with everywhere, according to Pew one in four facebook users deleted the app on their phone and then mysteriously win Facebook reports, user numbers they're just the same as they were before, and so you look at that and you're like what was that not real like everybody, a world was outraged by it was no, it was real. People just had nowhere else to go or they went to Instagram, which is maintained by re. Read the let's look at the other peace, because your just recommending that Facebook be broken up. Your also saying in your bed

there should be some sort of government role in creating speech standards for the internet and in particular I E. I think a lot of people who are sympathetic to the first party argument might serve bristle at the second part raised. Ok break on Facebook, that's fine, but do we really want the government making rules on what people can and can't say on social media I persuaded to, and I don't I dont want the government making rules about what people cannot can't say on social media right now.

These decisions are made by private corporations with zero public accountability. I think guidelines should be developed through a participatory democratic process that a regulatory agency would engage. They should be enforced by that agency and, I think, be appealed and ultimately decided in the court's. You know in the United States there are very few laments on free speech. Thank God they are things like yelling fire in a crowded theatre. There are very few limits, but there are some limits and it's the court's, who have decided that. I think that's the way it should be not corporate executives and men apart, I mean Mark Zuckerberg Himself- has talked about feeling like he has too much power like you, shouldn't have all this power

to determine what people can't can't say on the internet like do you think that genuine? Why do you think he's saying that I do think that genuine yeah? I do not think he genuinely feel and knows that that he does have too much power and his life would be easier if there were some government regulations now. I think you likely prefer light government regulations that are generally friendly to what Facebook is trying to do, but I dont think that he sang Any of that in bad faith. Are you? Are you you sort of saying that, in a certain way, if the government did take these actions to break up Facebook to take over some of the power to determine the speech, rules of the internet that are actually might have come as a relief to him. I think so, but he's not saying that I mean Facebook has

come out with a statement today in direct opposition to Europe. As they have said, this is not the right way to go about this. Yes, we need new rules for the internet, but no you you don't need to break up. I think they call it a successful american company to occur, Bush that even their statement, though near they take issue with the break up, but even there so we need rules for the internet, so I think that their genuine mark actually could do this. If you wanted to, he could say tomorrow, look we're gospel. Company up we're, not gonna, make any more rules. He could say we're shutting pieces of this down or were shouting. The whole thing done me is your argument that he can't fix it, as you said, or that he doesn't want to that there still this motivation inside him for growth for dominance and that actually he just won't do this of his own accord

I mean he could eat. Looks like you do. I mean, is really very possibility hard to imagine then. I think the reason that that four of rubs me the wrong way is. It falls back into this frame of, like private sector concerned, you're down himself. Let's not worry about government governments, bureaucratic, governs difficult governments hard less. Just hope that the leaders in the private sector do the right thing and we don't mean to take that approach like government can be and has historically been a force for good in creating competitive markets and in protecting Americans from harm. Sir yeah. I we can talk about that kind of fantasy scenario, but I think every minute that we continue to even push the envelope that is a minute that we're not talking about what government very plausibly legally can and should do so. What has been the reaction to

Europe and came out earlier this morning. What kind of feedback have you got in both from people that you worked with Facebook? Have you heard from mark? I am not. I haven't heard from our guy. I doubt I will have you heard from many, my Bert Facebook, so the reactions been generally positive. I think people are reading thinking, asking questions and try and understand so so far it's been. Has been positive and good, I talked to a couple people at Facebook today and I I sort of curious what they thought and they had, sir to basic. That's one people said while he hasn't been here in over a decade. He doesn't know anything about how this place runs. You know he wasn't a text I'll. Just anyway, And there are other people who say well, this is a political manoeuvre of beating up on Facebook has become Poland, we popular among especially Democrats, and that this might be you trying to John

on that bandwagon. In a way that would be helpful for you. How so I mean I don't know you tell me- I mean I well why I'm no interest in running for political office surgery, anything politically, with this argument, I do work on economic justice and political issues everyday. I do think this is ultimately a political kind question where I'm calling on government to step up so to the extent that politics are a part of it. Yes, they are. I think that the role of government is something that we often don't like to talk about. But we have to on this, but I have no political as in the narrow sense of that term agenda. On the issue of your now running for president. I am only not running for anything any time but you're

husband has run for Congress and sensibly may have political ambitions in the future. Is this somehow you ve thought about with him? When we talk about every I mean we talk about all kinds of things. We talk about everything, it's important to us in our lives and I don't think he's he has no plans to run for up any time, since this is not true the political campaign of mine of anybody. I know of any group there's no nefarious interest here. I do feel a sense of responsibility and I feel a sense of anger

and this is a big thing for me to write about talk that I don't do it lightly, but I am very grateful to Facebook and to mark for the positive ways at Facebook has made my life so different than I could have ever expected it's hard to overstate. I also think he has too much power and I think the company should be broken up and I think it should be regulated, so I'm gonna say my peace, because I feel like I meet him and I want to do it back yesterday's office plants don't match your needs of today with we work. Companies have the flexibility

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