Wikipedia tells me Hughes hasn't been involved with Facebook for 12 years, since he left in 2007. A lot can change in that period. It's hard to imagine Hughes providing a "smoking gun".
Note: As I understand it, anti-trust litigation isn't based on stuff a company did long ago to get into a commanding position, it is based a company having and abusing a commanding position. What does someone who left long ago know about this?
>A lot can change in that period. It's hard to imagine Hughes providing a "smoking gun".
I see it the opposite way: any forensic examination of the business lines in an IT-only operation can benefit greatly from institutional memory such as Hughes can provide and few if any other cooperators could. The "why" of business processes are often quickly obscured/lost by successive operations and if the company is a candidate for breakup, old decisions often speak to demarcations where business lines can be reasonably separated. Of course, the company's counsel would never admit to any reasonable theory of separation, so old execs are kind of essential to the examination.
>Note: As I understand it, anti-trust litigation isn't based on stuff a company did long ago, it is based a company having and abusing a commanding position. What does someone who left long ago know about this?
They know the why and all of the how and the when, which allows anyone interested in breaking up the company to put their fingers on the hidden fault lines buried by successive layers of years of "new normal" at the company.
I read this in a similar way as the Mueller hearing: there wasn’t anything added by having a senior civil servant be read his own findings in open court, and confirm that he did write that. Little of what Hugues can say, which is essentially his latest OpEds, gains being formally processed by the administration.
But it gives press attention to an interesting effort, and Hugues can repeat what I think is his key point: Mark is a genuinely well-intended, value-driven and well-informed person; however, that doesn’t matter, monopolies are dangerous, even in the hands of Mr Rogers. And Hugues understand social media better than most regulators and can recommend better principles, like inter-operability, and give context, notably on abuse control.
Not authority, the article just claims that Hughes is giving them information to use when building their case.