Mark Zuckerberg's Harvard roommate and Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes desperately wants Facebook broken up: Report

Facebook has been fighting one crisis after the other for quite some time now. Now, its co-founder Chris Hughes desperately wants Facebook broken up. Hughes is reportedly talking to the US government about breaking up Facebook, according to The New York Times.

Hughes has been working with leading antitrust academics, Scott Hemphill of New York University and Tim Wu of Columbia University. The trio has had meetings with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), the Justice Department and state attorneys general.

Although Hughes' exact role in dismantling the company he founded is unclear, his involvement certainly stands primarily because of his relationship with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

Last month, Hughes said in an interview with CNBC that he has not heard from Zuckerberg since calling publicly for the breakup of Facebook.

In the last year, major tech companies have come under massive scrutiny. The Justice Department is now probing into some biggest technology companies and whether their online platforms have hurt competition.

Of late, Hughes has become extremely critical of the social media giant in public.

Th coincides with the FTC announcing a record $5 billion fine against Facebook stemming from its investigation into the Cambridge Analytica data privacy scandal.

Who is Chris Hughes

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Chris left Facebook more than a decade ago. He first worked as Facebook's spokesperson from his dorm room with Mark Zuckerberg and Dustin Moskovitz. Hughes later moved to Palo Alto to work on the product team.

More trouble for Facebook

Russian involvement in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, fake news and the scandal over improper use of personal data of as many as 87 million users by data-mining firm Cambridge Analytica, which was affiliated with President Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, has put Facebook in a very tough position.

READ | Here's how Cambridge Analytica accessed data of more than half a million Indians through Facebook

In related news, the Australian government released a report Friday recommending tighter oversight over multinational digital platforms including Google and Facebook, to ensure fairness for other media businesses and give people more control over how their data is used.

(With inputs from AP)