REUTERS/Adam Hunger
Chris Hughes, co-founder of Facebook, listens to a question at the Charles Schwab IMPACT 2010 conference in Boston, Massachusetts October 28, 2010.
- Facebook cofounder Chris Hughes has been meeting with the US government about breaking up Facebook, according to The New York Times.
- Hughes has become an outspoken advocate for antitrust action against his former employer, arguing it's too powerful.
- Hughes attended the meetings with two other advocates pushing for antitrust proceedings, according to the report.
- The United States Federal Trade Commission has launched a formal antitrust investigation into Facebook.
Chris Hughes, a Facebook cofounder-turned-outspoken critic of the social network, is in conversations with US regulators about breaking up the tech company.
The New York Times reported on Thursday that Hughes, who left Facebook in 2007, has met with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), US Department of Justice, and unspecified state attorneys general over the past few weeks to discuss antitrust action, alongside two other prominent antitrust proponents, Tim Wu and Scott Hemphill.
The revelation comes a day after Facebook revealed in its Q2 2019 earnings that the FTC opened an antitrust investigation into it in June, reportedly examining its core social networking business.
A spokesperson for Chris Hughes declined to comment to Business Insider.The FTC, the Department of Justice, Tim Wu, and Scott Hemphill did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Earlier this year, Hughes went public with calls for Facebook to be broken up, arguing that it had grown too large and powerful. In an op-ed for The New York Times in May, Hughes said Facebook has become a "leviathan that crowds out entrepreneurship and restricts consumer choice," and that its acquisitions of WhatsApp and Instagram should be undone.
He joined a growing chorus of critics calling for antitrust action against Facebook, among them Wu and Hemphill, as well as politicians like Elizabeth Warren. Hemphill told The New York Times that Hughes "has been an important contributor to thinking about these issues."
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