Breaking up Facebook will make policing content more difficult: Mark Zuckerberg

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is pushing back calls for the social networking giant to be broken up.Zuckerberg argued that breaking up the social network will only make policing harmful content, such as hate speech and violence, more difficult for the company.He further stated that any smaller company created from a breakup would spend lesser on the security aspect of its services.As per a report by CNET, Facebook CEO's comments came during a conference call with reporters to discuss the release of Facebook’s transparency report, which highlights the work the company is doing to make the platform safer and more reliable.[caption id="attachment_6550701" align="alignnone" width="1024"]

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Reuters[/caption]“The amount of our budget that goes toward our safety systems is greater than Twitter’s whole revenue this year,” Zuckerberg said. "We’re able to do things that I think are just not possible for other folks to do."Zuckerberg also called any suggestion that Facebook is growing into a monopoly in its space “a little stretch,” even though Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp dominate social media. His argument against this was that Facebook accounts for less than 10 percent of the global online ad market — which he wants us to believe is the biggest marker of scale.He also argued that Facebook has competition, such as TikTok, Snapchat and Twitter, and that his company was a part of a "very competitive and dynamic environment where new services are constantly coming up."Of late, Facebook has been faced with growing criticism from consumer advocates, politicians and even ex-employees over the power the company holds, with the proposed solution focused on separating the main Facebook app from some of its other parts that include Instagram and WhatsApp.Chris Hughes, in an op-ed published by The New York Times earlier this month, had said that the CEO has "unprecedented" power.Earlier this week, former Facebook security chief Alex Stamos also urged Zuckerberg to step down as CEO.Facebook released a report at the call that included extensive data about how much hate speech, violence and other offensive content it pulled down from October 2018 to March 2019. The report showed that the company removed a record 3 billion accounts during those six months, found to be in violation of its policies.