At this point in our society it's safe to assume the saying "everyone and their mother is using..." is true in regard to Facebook, with the platform having a little over a reported 2.9 billion users in total last year. It has grown into something that no one could've imagined it becoming. Going from a students-only website to now owning different types of messaging platforms (WhatsApp), photo-sharing platforms (Instagram), and its own Facebook Marketplace to buy and sell items from other users. Facebook has not been free of controversy, dating back to its origins at Harvard, and even today on a much greater scale. But there is no denying the impact Facebook has had on our culture and the ways we interact with technology like it.
"The" History of Facebook
In October of 2003, Mark Zuckerberg launched a website to judge which one of 2 photos of girls at Harvard was hotter, called Facesmash.com. It was shut down by the school quickly, but not before it went viral throughout Harvard. Zuckerberg's site put him on the radar of Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss and Divya Narendra, who wanted Mark to create a social networking site for college students. On February 4, 2004, Zuckerberg launches thefacebook.com, for Harvard students only, and is then sued by the Winklevoss twins and Narendra, claiming he stole their idea. They eventually settled and walked away with $65 million. Zuckerberg's site, thefacebook.com, reached 1 million users by September 2004, by December 2005, it had 5 million users, and had dropped the "the" out of the name. In 2006, Facebook launched the news feed addition to its home page.
A new type of ads were introduced to the website in 2007, Facebook Ads and Social Ads. Facebook Ads allowed a business to create its own page to market their items, share photos, and interact with people on Facebook. Social Ads which would combine an advertiser's message with something a user's friend had recently done, like purchasing something and posting about it on their own page. These ads were placed onto a user's newsfeed and a precursor to the infamous targeted ads all over Facebook today. In August 2011, Facebook launched Messenger, then in 2012 Facebook acquired Instagram for $1 billion and then took Facebook public soon after, and finished out that year reaching 1 billion users on Facebook. The site made to the business big leagues in 2013, being named to the Fortune 500 list, emphasizing just how big a social media company could become. After its involvement in scandals in recent years, Facebook has faced huge amount of distrust from users, as the site tries to do everything they can to regain that trust. In October 2021, Facebook announced it will rebrand itself to "Meta" as a step to building its own metaverse. A virtual reality Facebook is creating to someday have all work, social media, and some aspects of life being done in this virtual world.
Facebook's Troubles
Something Facebook has yet to completely grasp is the idea "with great power, comes great responsibility" as Facebook has been involved in controversy since its inception. However, once it became a worldwide sensation the controversies widened in scale and impact on both users and the company. One of the most infamous scandals involving the site was surrounding the 2016 presidential election. During the run-up to that election, fake news spread like a wildfire on Facebook, with no effective way to control it. Large amounts of these fake news articles would push people to support Donald Trump, for example calling Hillary Clinton a killer or that Trump was supported by the Pope. Facebook has continued to struggle with filtering out fake news from their site, as it is occasionally difficult to determine what is fake and the sheer amount of fake news on the site increases the difficulty of removing it all efficiently. Facebook has also run into countless data breaches, leaking personal information of up to millions of users at a time. All of these recent scandals and controversies prompted Congress to summon Zuckerberg and Facebook's COO Sheryl Sandberg to testify after it was revealed that about 87 million user's data had been taken from Facebook by a political consultant firm and then used to help Donald Trump's campaign. Facebook was fined $5 billion by the US government, and was forced to introduce new ways to stop privacy leaks in the future.
Facebook's Impact
While Facebook has had its many troubles, it has revolutionized the way that people stay in touch with others they might not have been able to years ago. It has played a major role in bring everyone closer together, allowing someone on one side of the country to find a business on the other side that can supply them with something they need. It allows older people to remain in contact with people from their high school/college they would've only seen at a reunion every couple of years. But this connectivity has its downsides. It allows the people in society who wish to do terrible actions to find others like themselves and potentially cause wider harm. We have seen cyberbullying rates as well as teen suicide rates rise since social media began to be used my more people. Facebook may have allowed us to become a more connected society but it's pitfalls can become extreme issues if not dealt with quickly and effectively.
No comments:
Post a Comment