Facebook partners on the verge of a likely breakup

LAHORE:"It is time to break up Facebook," Chris Hughes, one of the co-founder of Facebook, has flashed the news on Thursday, adding that the company was so big and powerful that it threatened the American democracy due to the 34-year old Chairman Mark Zuckerberg's "quest for domination".

Worth of Mark Zuckerberg: The New York-born Mark Elliot Zuckerberg was worth over $66.5 billion in February 2019, making him the only person under 50 to feature in the "Forbes" 10 richest people list, and the only one under 40 in the Top 20 Billionaires list.

Mind-boggling Facebook financials as of end 2018: Founded on February 4, 2004by Messrs Mark Zuckerberg, Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes, this California-based American social networking site today has revenues of $55.838 billion, Operating Income of $24.913 billion, Net Income of $22.111 billion, assets worth $97.334 billion (roughly equivalent to Pakistan's net external debt) and equity of $84.127 billion.

Enjoying services of some 30,275 employees worldwide, Facebook had more than 2.3 billion monthly active users as of December 2018, more than the followers of Christianity, research shows.

According to Chris Hughes, Facebook is worth half a trillion dollars and commands, which is equivalent to more than 80 percent of the world's social networking revenue, making it a powerful monopoly, eclipsing all of its rivals and erasing competition from the social networking category.

In 2018, Facebook's earnings per share had increased by an astounding 40 per cent compared with the year before. Having created a revolution in the world of social networking, Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg controls three core communications platforms Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp that billions of people use every day, prompting his partner Chris to believe that Mark's influence was staggering, far beyond that of anyone else in the private sector or in government.

The "New York Times" states: "Facebook's board works more like an advisory committee than an overseer, because Mark controls around 60 per cent of voting shares. Mark alone can decide how to configure Facebook's algorithms to determine what people see in their News Feeds, what privacy settings they can use and even which messages get delivered. He sets the rules for how to distinguish violent and incendiary speech from the merely offensive, and he can choose to shut down a competitor by acquiring, blocking or copying it."

The prestigious American media house quoted Hughes as saying: "Mark is a good, kind person. But I'm angry that his focus on growth led him to sacrifice security and civility for clicks. 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 added and the "New York Times" carried more of his comments about Mark Zuckerberg: "And I'm worried that Mark has surrounded himself with a team that reinforces his beliefs instead of challenging them. The government must hold Mark accountable. For too long, lawmakers have marveled at Facebook's explosive growth and overlooked their responsibility to ensure that Americans are protected and markets are competitive. Any day now, the Federal Trade Commission is expected to impose a $5 billion fine on the company, but that is not enough; nor is Facebook's offer to appoint some kind of privacy czar."

The Facebook co-founder Hughes had gone on to assert: "We already have the tools we need to check the domination of Facebook. We just seem to have forgotten about them. 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."

He maintained: "In 2005, I was in Facebook's first office, on Emerson Street in downtown Palo Alto, when I read the news that Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation was acquiring the social networking site Myspace for $580 million. The overhead lights were off, and a group of us were pecking away on our keyboards, our 21-year-old faces half-illuminated by the glow of our screens. I heard a "whoa," and the news then ricocheted silently through the room, delivered by AOL Instant Messenger. My eyes widened. Really, $580 million? If Myspace was worth $580 million, Facebook could be worth at least double."

Facebook's monopoly is also visible in its usage statistics. About 70 per cent of American adults use social media, and a vast majority are on Facebook products. Over two-thirds use the core site, a third use Instagram, and a fifth use WhatsApp. By contrast, just fewer than a third report using Pinterest, LinkedIn or Snapchat.

Few more intriguing facts about Facebook: Facebook's dominance is not an accident of history. Last month, the day after the company predicted in an earnings call that it would need to pay up to $5 billion as a penalty for its negligence.

Interestingly, Facebook's shares surged 7 percent, adding $30 billion to its value, six times the size of the fine. In 2012, Twitter introduced a video network called Vine that featured six-second videos. That same day, Facebook blocked Vine from hosting a tool that let its users search for their Facebook friends while on the new network. The decision hobbled Vine, which shut down four years later.

Snapchat posed a different threat. Snapchat's Stories and impermanent messaging options made it an attractive alternative to Facebook and Instagram. And unlike Vine, Snapchat wasn't interfacing with the Facebook ecosystem; there was no obvious way to handicap the company or shut it out. So Facebook simply copied it.

The average Facebook user spends an hour a day on the platform; Instagram users spend 53 minutes a day scrolling through pictures and videos. Just last month, Facebook seemingly tried to bury news that it had stored tens of millions of user passwords in plain text format, which thousands of Facebook employees could see.

The most problematic aspect of Facebook's power is Mark Zuckerberg's unilateral control over speech. There is no precedent for his ability to monitor, organize and even censor the conversations of two billion people. In the summer of 2006, Yahoo had offered $1 billion for Facebook, claims Chris Hughes. Some economists are skeptical that breaking up Facebook would spur that much competition, because Facebook, they say, is a "natural" monopoly.

Meanwhile, others worry that the breakup of Facebook or other American tech companies could be a national security problem, as advancements in artificial intelligence require immense amounts of data and computing power, only large companies like Facebook, Google and Amazon can afford these investments, they say.

Over two days in April 2018, nearly 100 lawmakers had questioned Mark Zuckerberg about data privacy of users. In June 2018, multiple lawmakers said they believe Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg withheld important information about its data sharing agreements with device makers when he testified before several congressional committees in April. "Clearly, the company's partnerships with Chinese technology companies and others should have been disclosed before Congress and the American people," said House Energy and Commerce Chairman Greg Walden and top panel Democrat Frank Pallone of US Congress.