Mark Zuckerberg: Elizabeth Warren's Pledge To Break Up Facebook Would 'Suck For Us'
MENLO PARK, Calif. (CBS) – Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that an Elizabeth Warren presidency would be bad for his business, according to leaked audio from a company meeting. He told employees that a legal battle resulting from her pledge to break up the big technology companies would "suck for us."
A transcript published on TheVerge.com of two July question-and-answer sessions between Zuckerberg and workers shows how Facebook might respond to the Massachusetts senator's campaign promise to take on Silicon Valley giants.
"You have someone like Elizabeth Warren who thinks that the right answer is to break up the companies ... I mean, if she gets elected president, then I would bet that we will have a legal challenge, and I would bet that we will win the legal challenge," Zuckerberg said, according to the leaked audio. "And does that still suck for us? Yeah. I mean, I don't want to have a major lawsuit against our own government."
Warren's plan would force major tech companies like Facebook, Amazon and Google to spin off parts of their business and loosen their grip on online commerce. But Zuckerberg made it sound like Facebook is ready for the challenge.
"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," he said at the meeting.
Warren, who is leading some recent polls of Democratic candidates in Iowa and New Hampshire, responded to Zuckerberg's remarks on Twitter.
"What would really "suck" is if we don't fix a corrupt system that lets giant companies like Facebook engage in illegal anticompetitive practices, stomp on consumer privacy rights, and repeatedly fumble their responsibility to protect our democracy," she wrote.
The transcript also includes Zuckerberg's comments on Facebook's global currency plan called Libra, and what employees can tell their friends who don't like Facebook. Read more here.
