FACEBOOK CEO Mark Zuckerberg has rejected the call for breaking up his company, saying the size of Facebook is actually a benefit to its users and the security of the democratic process.

 

 

In an interview with French broadcaster France 2, Zuckerberg dismissed the claim made by his long-time friend and Facebook Co-founder Chris Hughes that it is time to break up Facebook as Zuckerberg has yielded “unchecked power and influence” far beyond that of anyone else in the private sector or in government”.

 

 

“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,” Zuckerberg told France 2 while in Paris to meet with French President Emmanuel Macron.

 

 

In an opinion piece in ‘The New York Times’ on Thursday, Hughes said the Government must hold Mark (Zuckerberg) accountable. “Mark’s personal reputation and the reputation of Facebook have taken a nose-dive,” wrote Hughes, who during his freshman year at Harvard University in 2002, was recruited by Zuckerberg for Facebook. Zuckerberg said that Facebook’s budget for safety this year is bigger than the whole revenue of the company when it went public earlier this decade.