After a fine .. America seeks to dismantle Facebook with the help of friend Zuckerberg

Chris Hughes, a former Facebook founder and friend of Mark Zuckerberg, joined Harvard University with leading antitrust academics for secret meetings with the US Federal Trade Commission, the Justice Department and lawyers to discuss a plan to dismantle Facebook for monopoly.

The New York Times reported that Hughes, Scott Hempell of New York University and Tim Woo of Columbia University met in recent weeks with the US Federal Trade Commission and Justice Department officials to explain how Facebook has conducted monopolies over the past few years, paving the way for a case to dismantle the company.

Who competes with Facebook?
The three men's proposition of the need to raise the monopoly issue is based on the theory of "serial defensive acquisitions" in the sense that Facebook has acquired all new competitors through massive acquisitions to protect its dominant position on the social networking market, which is a kind of monopoly.

The report confirms that these operations allow Facebook to control the market and impose higher fees on advertisers and give users any alternatives.

After the meetings, the Federal Trade Commission announced on Wednesday the start of an antitrust inquiry into the company.

The Ministry of Justice has also begun a broad review of antitrust for the technology industry, as did lawmakers. On Thursday, some state prosecutors met with the Justice Department to discuss competition in the industry.

The founding friend turned into a traitorous enemy
Mr Hughes's involvement is to bolster Facebook's claimants. It is rare for a founder to demand the dismantling of his firm. Many complaints about disbanding companies came from competitors or academics.

Although it is not clear the role played by Hughes, who left Facebook for more than a decade and has recently become an increasingly vocal critic of the company and to the organizers.

The New York Times says Hughes, for example, can provide investigators with evidence through current and former employees, competitors and interviews, especially since he knows a lot about the company's early years.

Mr. Hughes and Facebook declined to comment on the New York Times report.

Hughes - who has made hundreds of millions of dollars from his founding of Facebook - has become an outspoken critic of the company's market power and the need for government action.

In a lengthy article in The Times in May, he wrote, "We are a nation that prevents monopolies, no matter how good the leaders of these companies are."

Hughes went on to describe Facebook's power and its leader, Zuckerberg - a former college student - as "unprecedented". "It's time to break up Facebook," Hughes said.

Strong argument from academics
In their introductory presentations, academics Humphil and Wu said that Facebook, founded in 2004, succeeded in its early years of simply surpassing its competitors, such as MySpace, by providing an excellent social network, including fewer ads and promises to protect the total users.

But by 2010, Facebook was accelerating to adapt to the shift to smartphone computing and the rise of new social networking services, such as photo sharing, not by developing its services but by buying its younger rivals.

The largest acquisitions, the Image Sharing Service, were $ 1 billion in 2012 and Watsab's messaging service for $ 19 billion in 2014.

"Facebook can not name its competitors because it bought them," said Wu's academic, who testified.

At a hearing of the House's antimonopoly subcommittee last week, a Facebook executive was reluctant to name the company's opponents.