Facebook’s two decades have been marred by controversy, ranging from the Cambridge Analytica debacle and claims of political meddling to the absence of safeguards against offensive content. Sky News examines the past, the present, and potential future developments.
Mark Zuckerberg founded ‘thefacebook.com’ on February 4, 2004, from his Harvard dorm.
Twenty years later, many users find it difficult to recall a period of time when they weren’t reading through Instagram’s or Facebook’s news feeds.
Even while it helps us reconnect with long-lost friends and family and promotes small businesses, its 20-year existence has been marred by controversy due to issues like the Cambridge Analytica scandal, claims of election meddling, and a lack of safeguards against offensive information.
Here, we examine the last 20 years and speculate about the trillion-dollar tech company’s future.
2004
When Mark Zuckerberg, a student studying psychology and computer science, founded Facebook, it was exclusive to students like him and not available to the general public.
It was intended to allow them to message each other, post, and establish a network of “friends.”
The “wall,” where users may submit content and comment on others’, served as its central feature.
Following closely behind MySpace, its rival from the early 2000s, Facebook was not as ad-free when it came to monetization.
