As Facebook's influence on the world grows, so too have the calls for it to be broken up—including, now, by others in Silicon Valley. Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff signaled his support for Facebook to divide up its acquisitions like Instagram and Whatsapp in an interview Wednesday with CNN, becoming the latest major figure to jump on the antitrust bandwagon. “It's addictive, it's not good for you, they're after your kids, they're running political ads that aren't true . . . and they're also acquiring other companies and co-mingling [data those companies have on their users] into theirs,” Benioff told CNN's Poppy Harlow. “And I think at that point, because they're now doing that, that they probably should be broken up. Because they're having an undue influence as the largest social media platform on the planet.”

The Silicon Valley mogul pointed to the fact that most Americans don't know that Facebook owns Instagram and Whatsapp as part of his reasoning for breaking up Facebook, noting that “all of those services are being integrated to get a 360-degree view of you, so that they're able to directly position you.” “By fully integrating all of those services, you make Facebook more powerful,” Benioff continued. The Salesforce CEO also rejected Facebook's defense that breaking up the company would make it harder to defend against attacks like election interference, saying that was not a salient argument. “What really that narrative is, is trust is our highest priority,” Benioff said. “Why they can't say that trust is our highest value, is beyond me.”

This isn't the first time that Benioff has expressed his misgivings about Facebook, having previously suggested in 2018 that the company should be regulated like the cigarette industry. “They're addictive, they're not good for you, maybe there are all kinds of forces trying to get you to do certain things, there's a lot of parallels,” Benioff said. The CEO went further in his criticism of Facebook Wednesday, particularly its decision to allow political advertisements that are false or misleading, such as President Donald Trump's campaign ads promoting baseless Ukraine conspiracy theories about Joe Biden and Hunter Biden. Benioff called on Congress to pass legislation requiring truthful advertising on social media, and said there was “no question” that he would have personally refused to run such advertisements if he were in CEO Mark Zuckerberg's position. “I think this is extremely important in the age of social media, because they have the information of who those persuadables are, and various political organizations are targeting those groups,” Benioff said about the need for legislation. “That's the insight from the 2016 election. It's a very vulnerable moment right now.”

While Benioff is one of the few major Silicon Valley figures to advocate for breaking up Facebook, along with Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes, the issue has become a major one in Washington and for governments around the country. Facebook faces investigations from multiple federal agencies, state attorneys general, and Congress, and the issue of whether or not the company—and Big Tech more generally—should be broken up has become a major talking point on the 2020 campaign trail. “Look, you get to be the umpire in the baseball game, or you get to have a team, but you don't get to do both at the same time,” Senator Elizabeth Warren said at Tuesday's Democratic debate. “We need to enforce our antitrust laws, break up these giant companies that are dominating, big tech, big pharma, big oil, all of them.” The issue of whether Big Tech should be broken up remains a source of debate, though, with candidate Andrew Yang saying Tuesday that “we also have to be realistic that competition doesn't solve all the problems.” “It's not like breaking up these big tech companies will revive Main Street businesses around the country,” Yang continued. “Breaking up the tech companies does nothing to make our kids healthier.”