The undercover clips show Benny Thomas, Facebook’s global planning lead, opining about Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg having too much power, expressing concerns about Zuckerberg’s biotechnology startups, and warning about the advent of artificial intelligence.
“I would break up Facebook, which means I would make less money probably, but I don’t care. Like, that’s what needs to be done. Instagram, Facebook Messenger, Oculus, WhatsApp ... all need to be separate companies. It’s too much power when they’re all one together,” Thomas said, according to the video.
“Most people don’t understand these things and most people don’t think about them, which is why a lot of [expletive] goes down, because a lot of people aren’t paying attention.”
Facebook officials didn’t immediately respond to a request by The Epoch Times for comment.
“No king in the history of the world has been the ruler of 2 billion people, but Mark Zuckerberg is and he’s 36. That’s too much for a 36-year-old. You should not have power over 2 billion people. I just think that’s wrong,” Thomas said.
The social media giant is facing two major antitrust lawsuits in the United States, one by the Federal Trade Commission and another by a group of state attorneys general.
“He [Zuckerberg] owns a controlling stake in the company. So, you can’t do it the usual way that you do it in corporate, which is the board can just fire you, right? The board can’t do that to Zuck. The board can’t do that to Larry Page and Sergey Brin [Google] because they own too much of the company. They’re too powerful. So, these are not companies anymore. These are countries,” Thomas said.
Thomas also said a project he worked on at Facebook registered more than 4.5 million voters.
“One of the things I worked on, which made me happy, was a voter registration drive. These are the kinds of things—this is the good side of Facebook. This is the kind of thing that you can only do with a company that has the sheer scale and reach of Facebook. We set ourselves a goal of registering 4 million new people and we went over that target. We did 4.5,” Thomas said.
The voter registration drive by Facebook hasn’t been previously reported. Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, committed $400 million to the Center for Tech and Civic Life for the nonprofit to assist jurisdictions in running elections. The nonprofit was highlighted in a number of cases brought after the Nov. 3, 2020, election.
