Facebook turns 20, the same week Mark Zuckerberg gets into heaps more court trouble

Catching the news this week of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg being drawn and quartered in court for the wrongdoing his website has unleashed, you’d be forgiven for not realising it’s the social media site’s 20th anniversary. So happy birthday, Facebook.

On February 4, 2004, Zuckerberg launched ‘TheFacebook’ (all one word) to his Harvard classmates, and within days the site was up and running publicly, gaining instant attraction from campus individuals. Soon enough, the entire globe would join in.

In the 20 years that followed, the platform – subsequently rebranded to Facebook – went on to change the worlds of communication, even going on to influence politics, law, and general social mores. One thing’s for sure, Facebook’s impact on society cannot be understated.

This week, Zuckerberg was in front of the US Senate defending his company’s record on child sexual exploitation, and just last week, Republican Senators including Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley and Lindsey Graham truly got stuck into the site’s founder.

“Mr. Zuckerberg, you have blood on your hands,” said Graham in an opening statement in court. Zuckerberg apologised to victims of the fallout of his social media enterprise after Senators accused him of endangering children, while the company is still in trouble for tampering with election influence.

Over the past few years, Facebook has also faced legal troubles in the areas of individual privacy and corporate manipulation.

Today, the social media platform is a lot more regulated and while it may have lost it’s initial gloss – with millions of users turning to zippier sites like Instagram and TikTok – it continues to generate billions of dollars from its advertising streams. Last year, Meta’s revenues jumped by 24 per cent to $AU58.8 billion.

As of October 2023, Facebook ranked as the 3rd most visited website in the world.

“We had a good quarter as our community and business continue to grow,” said Zuckerberg, “we’ve made a lot of progress on our vision for advancing AI and the metaverse.”

We’ll have to wait and see if that’s what the people want, or have we had enough of Zuckerberg sticking his nose in where it doesn’t belong?

Antonino Tati

THE POP SHOP