Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg criticized Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, saying that he has too much power and that the social network should be broken up.
In a new interview with the New York Times editorial board published on Thursday, January 16, the former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, voiced his concerns over Facebook and how much power Zuckerberg has over the tech giant.
“No one company and no one person should have the kind of power that they’ve accumulated,” he said in the interview.
Buttigieg went on to say that while he isn’t as open about it as other candidates, he does think there is a strong case for breaking up Facebook.
“The real problem is how a corporation of that size acquires other competitors and develops certain powers. And then, there’s a problem of their refusal to accept their responsibility for speech that they make money from,” Buttigieg said.
Out of all the Democratic presidential candidates, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren has been the most vocal about her stance on big tech and made a call to break the companies up a part of her presidential campaign. Warren’s proposal would explicitly break up bigger companies, like forcing Amazon to give up control of Whole Foods and splitting Instagram and WhatsApp from Facebook.
Other Democratic presidential candidates like Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and entrepreneur Andrew Yang are calling for more regulation of big tech.
Buttigieg gave the Times more insight into how he would regulate big tech if he was elected into office.
“One of the things I think we’re going to need is a standard that shifts the burden to large companies, especially when they’re making acquisitions, like the acquisition of WhatsApp by Facebook, that are likely anti-competitive,” he said. “The problem is, it shouldn’t just be left to companies to decide how to solve these problems. There needs to be a policy response.”
