© BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP/Getty Images
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg walks to meetings for technology regulations and social media issues on September 19, 2019, in Capitol Hill, Washington, DC.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg appears to threaten politicians who want to break up the company with election interference 'issues', and warns that unregulated social media would create angry crowds, in recently leaked audio.
Breaking up Big Tech firms like Facebook "is not actually going to solve the issues," Zuckerberg complained during a July open question-and-answer meeting with employees, a recording of which was obtained by The Verge. Instead, he warned, it'll make them worse.
"It doesn't make election interference less likely. It makes it more likely because now the companies can't coordinate and work together."
Why broken-up Facebooklets would refuse to coordinate to quash "election interference," one can only wonder. The statement,
which could be easily interpreted as a veiled threat, comes in response to widespread concern that Facebook is a monopoly with too much power over what information people see online.
Facebook previously threatened the journalism industry with extinction if publishers refused to cooperate with the social media behemoth ("I'll be holding hands with your dying business like in a hospice," his deputy Campbell Brown
warned publishers in a meeting last year, adding that Zuckerberg "doesn't care" about what happens to them if they scorn Facebook's olive branch), and Zuckerberg is very much aware of the amount of political power his company wields, especially heading into an election year.
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