Facebook is one of the most popular and influential social media networks with over 2.6 billion active users monthly as of the first quarter of 2020.
It is a free social networking site where new users have to create profiles, can upload pictures and videos, join and create groups and connect with friends and families. It has various components such as the Timeline:a user’s profile page for posting content, Status: allows users to alert friends of their current situation and location, News Feed, video call and can connect to anyone across the world. The company earns revenue from advertisements on its website, from developers or through payments for digital products.

The social media giant was founded in February 2004 by Harvard students, Eduardo Saverin, Dustin Moskovitz, Mark Zuckerberg and Chris Hughes and was known by “TheFacebook” and “Facebook” from September 2005. What was launched initially to connect the students of the same university expanded beyond boundaries allowing access to anyone in September 2006.
In June 2004, the headquarters were moved to Palo Alto, California. The facebook “Wall”, where users could post statuses, pictures and receive messages, was introduced in the same year and over time the like button, video calling, reaction buttons, newsfeed, advertisements, groups came up on its platform.
The 2010 Oscar-winning film The Social Network explored the launch and journey of Facebook. Zuckerberg however claimed that many details in the movie were inaccurate.

Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Facebook from the beginning, holds 60% voting rights. As reported by CNBC in October 2019, Zuckerberg said that if he hadn’t been the CEO, he would have been fired from the company long back and Facebook wouldn’t have become a behemoth. It was his foresightedness in events like declining to sell the company in 2006 to Yahoo and changing algorithms for safety of users even though it amounted to a loss of $100 billion of market cap in a single day in 2018, that has brought Facebook where it is today.
Facebook acquired photo sharing app Instagram in 2012 for $1 billion and went public by releasing their IPO which then gave it a market value of $102.4 billion. The messaging app WhatsApp was acquired in 2014 for $19 billion.
This large scale direct consumer engagement wasn’t available earlier hence it attracted more companies to market and advertise. It also became an influential tool for creating groups for political movements, such as the 2008 U.S. presidential elections, in Columbia, in Egypt and in other countries.

Privacy issue has been a consistent problem for Facebook from 2006 but garnered immense attention in March 2018. On March 16, Facebook announced the suspension of a shadowy political consulting firm, Cambridge Analytica. On March 17, The New York Times published stories on how the aforementioned firm had misused private information extracted from more than 50 million users without their consent. The data had been extorted through online quizzes and used to create advertisements which included scaremongering and fake news to divert the users towards their desired political parties in 2016 US Presidential elections as well as for the Brexit referendum in the same year. About a 100 Russian suspected agents, who exploited the advertising tools to get their candidate Donald Trump elected, were also removed from the platform.

The cases led Zuckerberg to testify before the lawmakers in Washington in April 2018. The Federal Trade Commission also investigated the company on a violation of agreement of 2011 on misusing user data acquired from quizzes and apps. Zuckerberg told Congress that it had been evident that the mishandling of data, spread of fake news and hate speech hadn’t been prevented and that it was his mistake. The suggestions for regulations by the Congress had been accepted by Zuckerberg and other tech-heads.
Following this hearing, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg also went before the Congress in September over issues like user privacy, hate speech, abuse and foreign interference. Sandberg concurred with CEO Zuckerberg’s earlier comments and agreed to the new regulations with a caveat.
2018 also saw other allegations made on Facebook, such as genocide against the minority Rohingyas of Myanmar by the country’s military officials and the Sri Lankan government banning the online website in order to quell anti-Muslim riots which were being spread by fake news.

After series of such mishaps, Zuckerberg enlisted series of steps that have been taken to fix the issues inclusive of advertising transparency, fact-checking partnerships and artificial intelligence to tackle harmful content and also reduce viral videos. Large portion of capital and employees are also assigned for reducing harm and increasing security.
Despite all this, Facebook’s leadership believes that their actions are the best and future course shall judge the implementation of new privacy tools.

Authored by: Samriddhi Nahata

Literary Sources:

  1. Business Insider https://www.businessinsider.in/slideshows/miscellaneous/mark-zuckerberg-faced-scandal-after-scandal-during-the-last-decade-running-facebook/slidelist/72772802.cms#slideid=72772822
  2. Vox https://www.vox.com/technology/2018/12/21/18149099/delete-facebook-scandals-2018-cambridge-analytica
  3. The Street https://www.thestreet.com/technology/history-of-facebook-14740346
  4. TRT World https://www.trtworld.com/magazine/a-recent-history-of-facebook-scandals-26157
  5. NDTV https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/mark-zuckerberg-sees-progress-for-facebook-after-a-controversial-2018-1969621
    Image Sources:
  6. https://www.brandwatch.com/wp-content/resize/uploads/2018/02/thefacebook.jpg
  7. https://www.statista.com/chart/amp/10047/facebooks-monthly-active-users/
  8. https://i.insider.com/5cdd76dc021b4c07f032e0e7