Chris Hughes' involvement with anti-trust academics stands out because few founders have gone on to argue for the dismantling of their company
In recent weeks, Hughes has joined two leading antitrust academics, Scott Hemphill of New York University and Tim Wu of Columbia University, in meetings with the Federal Trade Commission, the Justice Department and state attorneys general. In those meetings, the three have laid out a potential antitrust case against Facebook, Wu and Hemphill said.
For nearly a decade, they argue, Facebook has made “serial defensive acquisitions” to protect its dominant position in the market for social networks, according to slides they have shown government officials. Scooping up nascent rivals, they assert, can allow Facebook to charge advertisers higher prices and can give users worse experience.
Hughes’ involvement stands out because few founders have gone on to argue for the dismantling of their company. As the scrutiny of the world’s biggest tech companies has intensified in the last year, many of the complaints about them have come from competitors or academics.
On Wednesday, Facebook announced that the FTC—- had started an antitrust investigation into the company. The Justice Department has also started a broad antitrust review of the technology industry, as have lawmakers. And on Thursday, some state attorneys general met with the Justice Department to discuss competition in the industry.
It is unclear just what role Hughes, who left Facebook more than a decade ago and has become increasingly critical of Facebook in public, is playing in the pitches to regulators. In the slide presentation, a “Who We Are” page lists Hughes as the third member of the group. The page concludes with the bullet point, “Speaking only for ourselves, not a client.”
But Hughes could, for example, provide investigators with leads to current and former company employees and competitors to interview or subpoena. A partly redacted copy of the slides was provided to The New York Times, with names of the people to interview blacked out. Wu and Hemphill have shared the redacted version of the slides with some other antitrust experts. One of them, who asked not to be identified, sent it to The Times.
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