Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has privately slammed Senator Elizabeth Warren’s proposal to break up Facebook and other tech giants. On Tuesday, the technology website The Verge published a leaked audio recording of Zuckerberg saying a Warren presidency would “suck” for the company and that he may sue the U.S. government if it attempted to break up the company.
Mark Zuckerberg: “Like Elizabeth Warren, who thinks that the right answer is to break up the companies. You know, if she gets elected president, then I would — I would bet that we will have a legal challenge, and I would bet that we will win the legal challenge. Does that still suck for us? Yeah. I mean, I don’t want to have to, you know, have a major lawsuit against our own government. I mean, that’s not, like, the position that you want to be in when you’re — you know, I mean, it’s like we — we care about our country and, like, want to work with our government and do good things, and — but, look, at the end of the day, if someone’s going to try to threaten something that existential, you go to the mat, and you fight.”
Senator Elizabeth Warren responded on Twitter by writing, “What would really 'suck' is if we don’t fix a corrupt system that lets giant companies like Facebook engage in illegal anti-competitive practices, stomp on consumer privacy rights, and repeatedly fumble their responsibility to protect our democracy.”