Once a progressive pipe dream, the call to break up Facebook edged mainstream earlier this month

thanks to a passionate New York Times op-ed by Chris Hughes, Mark Zuckerberg's college roommate

and former business partner.

This is me back in my college days, and this is my roommate, Mark.

Together, we founded Facebook in 2004. Now, 15 years later, I think Facebook

has grown too big and too powerful. Every week brings new headlines about privacy violations,

election interference, or mental health concerns. I haven't been at the company in over a decade,

but I feel a sense of responsibility

to account for the damage done. First, Hughes plea was met with high fives from the press.

Senator Bernie Sanders quickly jumped on the bandwagon, joining longtime tech critic and fellow

Democratic presidential hopeful Senator Elizabeth Warren. Then came a series of hard questions.

How exactly would breaking up Facebook, which also owns WhatsApp and Instagram,

address free speech concerns or help stifle the spread of propaganda on the platform?

And how would American regulations affect the majority of Facebook users,

many in the global South and in particular, Myanmar?

Facebook's monthly active users in Myanmar, it's about 22 million. In Myanmar, Facebook is the Internet.

Michael Lewin is an American-born antitrust lawyer living in Yangol, Myanmar.

From his vantage point, far, far from the U.S., he says that the calls to break up Facebook could have some wide-ranging unintended consequences.

This coming from someone who's seen what harm Facebook has done. It's widely agreed that

the massacre of Rohingya people, which started in 2017, was fueled by crude propaganda campaigns

spread via Facebook. Luyn says that the reason those campaigns worked is bound up in the country's recent history.

What happened was you have this country that opened up, you know, being a military dictatorship.

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