Facebook

Reaching an average of approximately 3.07 billion daily active users around the world in 2024, the social-networking site Facebook has brought people together in unprecedented ways and provided innovative sharing and communication tools. However, the site and its policies have also raised concerns about privacy, safety, misinformation, and psychological well-being.

When Facebook was first released in 2004, several predecessors and early competitors already existed. Friendster, a social network for finding people with similar interests (with the possible intention of dating), was founded in 2002 by Jonathan Abrams and Rob Pazornik. The year 2003 saw the launch of Myspace, a media-heavy site that let users customize their profile pages. LinkedIn, a social-networking site for business professionals, was also launched in 2003.

In addition to more general social-networking sites, campus-specific social networks were founded at many colleges and universities in the early 2000s. The first was Club Nexus, launched at Stanford University in 2001, but Columbia University and several other schools also offered similar services, many created and managed by students. There were also several social networks aimed at college students in general, including the Daily Jolt and Collegester.com. Despite Facebook's late start compared to its competitors, the site ultimately gained the largest user base of all social-networking sites, becoming one of the highest-trafficked sites of the decade.

Facebook's Beginnings

Harvard University student Mark Zuckerberg developed two websites in 2003 that would set the stage for the service that became Facebook. CourseMatch, which helped students determine their courses based on what others were taking, and Facemash, which allowed people to compare images of fellow students, were immediate hits and proved that college students were ready to take their socializing online.

Based on the popularity of these two sites and Zuckerberg's initial experiments with image-commenting capabilities, the first version of Facebook was launched on February 4, 2004, at TheFaceBook.com, allowing students to create profiles and connect with other students. Within a day of the launch, between twelve hundred and fifteen hundred people had signed up for the service.

Dispute over Origins

Substantial dispute surrounds the origin of the idea for Facebook. Several individuals—primarily fellow Harvard students—have claimed various levels of involvement in developing the service. Zuckerberg's friends and collaborators Chris Hughes and Dustin Moskovitz are widely credited with significant early involvement. Another friend and collaborator, Eduardo Saverin, was eventually ousted under less-than-amicable circumstances.

Twin brothers Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss founded HarvardConnection (later renamed ConnectU), a campus social network, with Divya Narendra in December 2002. Zuckerberg apparently agreed to work on HarvardConnection but did not complete the work and instead launched Facebook. The Winklevosses and Narendra sued Facebook in September 2004 for breach of contract, eventually reaching a settlement in February 2008.

Another Harvard student, Aaron Greenspan, developed a campus social network called houseSYSTEM in 2003. Part of houseSYSTEM was called the Universal Face Book, and the service offered event calendars and photo albums. Greenspan has repeatedly alleged that Facebook was his idea and filed a petition to cancel the Facebook trademark, which was settled in 2009.

Beyond Harvard

After approximately one month of exclusive access for Harvard students, Facebook opened up to Stanford, Columbia, and Yale universities. By June, the site had extended its access to users at forty different colleges and universities.

The early popularity of Facebook stemmed from a number of factors, including widespread internet access, which was initially greater on college campuses than in the general population, and a focused target demographic of college students who constantly socialized, had numerous social connections, and were willing to share personal information online with others. Additionally, the site was frequently updated by its users, prompting nearly 60 percent of Facebook's users to visit the site daily and some 20 percent of users to visit the site more than five times a day.

Facebook grew quickly. Zuckerberg and cofounder Moskovitz moved to California's Silicon Valley and received their first funding—$500,000 from PayPal cofounder Peter Thiel—in June 2004. The site reached one million users by November 2004, narrowly missing a goal set by Thiel of 1.5 million users for the year. In Palo Alto, Zuckerberg connected with Sean Parker, founder of the online music-sharing service Napster, who served as Facebook's president for a short, but influential, time.

Following Thiel's initial investment, Facebook continued to grow, attracting investment interest from venture capital companies. Zuckerberg turned down several acquisition offers, some from large and profitable companies such as Viacom, which wanted to combine the service with MTV.com. Interest in Facebook was sparked by its huge user base, rapid growth, high levels of repeat usage, and attractive demographic of users: young college students. Even the Washington Post displayed interest in investing in Facebook, but the venture capital firm Accel Partners outbid the news outlet by offering $12.7 million in funding in exchange for a 15 percent stake in the company. The investment would be crucial in acquiring the staff to develop the features and partnerships that would ultimately help Facebook become the dominant social network of the 2000s.

Basic Features

Facebook added many capabilities throughout its evolution, but early core Facebook features included the user's profile, wall, status update, and notifications.

Facebook user profiles include basic personal information, such as name, age, and gender; background information, such as hometown or schools attended; interests and hobbies; and other customizable information. Unlike many other social networking sites, Facebook does not make it easy to find people through shared interests; the emphasis is on maintaining existing connections, not creating new ones. A user's wall is a profile section where other users can post greetings, links, or photos. A status update is a message that a user can post to Facebook to be displayed to their friends on the site.

If they so choose, Facebook users can receive notifications by email or through a smartphone when other users write on their wall, "tag" (identify) them in photos, comment on a status update or post, or send them private messages. Notifications were a key component in building habitual Facebook use among members, which then led to numerous visits to the site. In addition to the more public communication of wall posts, status updates, and comments, Facebook offers users the option of private communication through messaging and chat features.

Other ways to communicate on Facebook include groups and events. Users can create groups for general communication around a particular topic or cause, or they can schedule events such as birthday parties or protests. The vast range of Facebook events and groups shows the flexibility and power of the platform, which has often been used for purposes of political organization and activism.

Evolution of Key Features

By October 2005, Facebook had reached five million users—a large number that nevertheless paled in comparison to Myspace's twenty-four million users at the time. But in late 2005, Facebook unveiled a feature that may have been critical for the site to eventually surpass Myspace: the ability to upload and tag photos. Users could approve tagged photos or "un-tag" themselves from photos. Photos in which a user was tagged were linked to that user's profile. The tagging feature was the first of its kind and was key in attracting new users and getting existing users more involved with the site.

The news feed, another crucial feature, was introduced in September 2006. It allowed users and their friends to post status updates, profile changes, or new photo uploads to a central place for users to view all of their friends' Facebook activity. Many reacted strongly against the feature, believing that it added too much visibility of their online activities, but much of the backlash died down when Facebook introduced more ways for users to control which activities would be shared and with whom. Truly revolutionary in concept, the news feed transformed Facebook from being a place to view individual pictures or specific profile pages to being the go-to place for all updates from all online friends.

Also in September 2006, Facebook opened up the service to all people over the age of thirteen with a valid email address. After open registration was enabled, the number of new Facebook accounts created each day nearly doubled, reflecting widespread interest.

In January 2016, Facebook rolled out a live video function allowing users to broadcast from their smartphones, which followed competitor Twitter's introduction of a similar service, Periscope. In April 2016, Facebook overhauled the layout of its mobile app in order to make the live video option more prominent, along with adding features such as photo and video filters and the ability of users to comment on videos in real time using emojis, which had earlier been added as alternatives to the "like" button on text and video posts.

In May 2018, Facebook announced it was developing a dating service that would be integrated into the site. The company emphasized that it would prioritize privacy and security, keeping the service separate from users' normal friend connections. The service, named Facebook Dating, officially launched in September 2019.

Facebook Platform and Facebook Connect

By May 2007, 1 percent of all internet time was spent on Facebook. In the same month, Facebook launched the Facebook Platform at its first annual F8 Developers Conference. The platform enabled software developers to create applications that integrated with the service, such as online games that could be played within Facebook. This move accelerated the company's rise, as its users began to download more and more applications (known as "apps") that prompted them to log in to Facebook multiple times a day. By November 2007, more than 8,000 apps had been developed on the platform, a number that would rise to 33,000 by July 2008.

The success of the platform showed that Facebook's primary value proposition was not its features but was instead the connections between its users. The platform also offers a social graph, which features the connections between users and their shared interests. It then offered access to the social graph to other software developers, a move that had nothing to do with risking its own success but rather with ensuring it: by selling its social data to other companies and developers, Facebook no longer needed to develop multiple types of functionality for the site. Instead, it could serve as the platform for myriad applications developed by others.

In late 2008, Facebook released Facebook Connect, a secure single sign-on system that allowed people to access any website using their Facebook login. This was not only convenient for users, it also enabled the social graph to track users' activity on other websites.

Advertising, Business Model, and Corporate Culture

By the fall of 2007, Facebook had fifty million users. Microsoft invested $240 million in the company as part of an advertising deal, taking a 1.6 percent stake in Facebook. As the company continued to grow, Facebook hired Google executive Sheryl Sandberg in 2008 to serve as chief operating officer. The company was first cash-flow positive in 2009, due mostly to advertising.

Facebook represented a revolution in advertising, because it provided not only a platform to broadcast product messages, but it also generated marketing and usage data to inform the successful targeting of those messages. For example, Facebook made it possible to target an advertisement about a running shoe sale in San Francisco only to users who live in the area and have indicated interest in running. This type of targeted marketing was unprecedented and prompted significant experimentation by other advertisers. However, many Facebook users eventually expressed discomfort with the degree to which the information they share on the service could be used to gear specific advertisements to them. This lack of user control and transparency factored heavily into widespread criticisms of Facebook in the late 2010s and early 2020s, especially in relation to the numerous scandals that emerged during that time. In late 2021, the company announced it would end targeted advertising based on categories such as race, health, sexual orientation, religion, and political views.

Despite its huge user base and advertising profits, Facebook was known for a casual work culture, with many young employees who dressed in jeans and T-shirts. Zuckerberg in particular became well-known for often wearing a hooded sweatshirt and sandals. The company's offices were decorated with graffiti, including the company's motto Move Fast and Break Things, which fostered a hacker culture of experimentation. However, as the company grew some critics accused it of moving away from this spirit and taking on a more traditional corporate image. Several lawsuits over the years also alleged various forms of discrimination in the workplace, including sexism and racial bias, and contractors at times complained of poor working conditions and other issues. More broadly, the company was blamed by some for negative social effects such as gentrification and extreme housing prices in the San Francisco Bay area.

Privacy, Criticism, and Blocking

In addition to providing user data for advertisement targeting, Facebook has been widely criticized for perceived privacy infringements. Although users are typically able to limit the content they post to be visible only to friends on the site, these settings often default to sharing information publicly. This not only aggravates some users, but it has allegedly resulted in serious situations of people losing their jobs, not being hired for a job, or not being accepted to a college because of content posted on Facebook.

In December 2009, Facebook changed all profiles to be public—meaning visible to anyone, even non-users and non-friends—by default, requiring users to change their individual settings if they wanted to keep their information private. Because many users preferred to keep their information visible to friends only, the switch angered many users and caused some to stop using the service. Several organizations joined a US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) complaint against Facebook for its lack of privacy protections.

Facebook's ability to open up connections between people who have fallen out of touch and to facilitate communication between such parties also proved to have negative aspects. For example, the platform has been blamed for playing a role in divorces, with spouses discovering information such as private messages between users. A December 2009 study found that 20 to 33 percent of all divorce filings in the United Kingdom cited Facebook as a reason for the separation, reflecting a potential downside of widespread sharing. Other researchers and advocates turned attention to the social media platform's role in bullying and other damaging behavior. Meanwhile, some individuals and organizations began to suggest that users can form an addiction to social media, with potentially harmful mental and even physical effects.

Other concerns about Facebook have come from various sources. The site has been blocked in many countries, including China and Iran in 2009, due to concerns about its role as a tool for political activism in opposition to parties in power.

Initial Public Offering

In July 2010, Facebook announced that it had 500 million users, making it the world's largest online social network. By the end of 2011, based on page views, Facebook was second only to Google as the most-used website in the United States. Then, on May 17, 2012, after years of rebuffing acquisition offers and urgings to go public, Facebook staged an initial public offering (IPO) on the NASDAQ stock exchange, raising some $16 billion by selling more than 400 million shares at $38 a share in what was the third largest IPO in US history.

However, technical glitches and other problems with the extremely large and widely anticipated stock offering led to disappointing results, as the price fell rather than rising after the first day. Losses continued in the ensuing weeks, and the stock stayed below its debut price for more than a year before rallying in mid-2013, climbing above $100 a share by early 2016.

Meanwhile, in October 2012, the company announced that it had reached more than one billion worldwide active monthly users. That number rose to 1.86 billion by February 1, 2017, and surpassed 2 billion later that year. In late 2017 a reported 185 million people used the site per day, though growth subsequently stalled, due in part to increasing attention to various scandals and controversies. Still, by March 2019, Facebook reported that it had an average of 1.56 billion daily active users. This figure increased to 1.93 billion by mid-2021, although in early 2022 the company reported the first-ever decline in its number of daily active users, with 1.929 billion reported in December 2021. That number rose again, however, and by mid-2023 Facebook had 2.06 billion daily active users. The company cited its popular Reels feature, introduced in late 2021 to mimic the format of TikTok, as one reason for this increase.

Fake News, Misinformation, and Other Content Concerns

In August 2016, Facebook fired its team of editors responsible for the trending news section. This decision was made following accusations that the trending articles had a liberal political bias. The human editors were replaced with algorithms that determined what the biggest trending stories were. This turned out to not be an effective alternative, however. The algorithms allowed fake news to dominate the top of Facebook's trending stories list. These fake news stories would have previously been caught by editors.

Surveys in the mid- to late-2010s showed that increasing numbers of Facebook users got their news through posts on the social media site. In the aftermath of the 2016 US presidential election, Facebook was the subject of great criticism for allowing fake news stories, particularly ones that had to do with the election, to proliferate unchecked. In mid-November 2016, Zuckerberg announced that the company would not allow fake news sites to advertise and asked users for their help in catching fake news articles. However, media reports suggested the company's initiatives had little immediate success. Indeed, criticisms grew as investigations exposed Russian interference in the 2016 election. Many commentators suggested that fake news stories, often created by or with support from Russian agents seeking to support Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump and undermine Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton, may have had a considerable effect on the controversial election.

In early 2017, Zuckerberg announced a shift in the company's focus from connecting friends and family to creating a social infrastructure that would connect a global community. In an over five-thousand-word letter posted to his own Facebook page on February 16, Zuckerberg announced revised company goals of globally promoting peace and understanding as well as prosperity and freedom. He stated that through the use and implementation of artificial intelligence (AI) technology, Facebook would be helping to make the world safer by removing fake news stories, blocking terrorist propaganda, and helping those suffering from mental illness or bullying. According to Zuckerberg, the focus on building stronger online communities would in turn strengthen offline communities. Other aspects of the refocused mission included developing better and more reliable ways to safeguard individuals and respond to emergencies both on- and offline; highlighting diverse perspectives on current events and removing sensationalistic or inaccurate news stories; and creating a world society that is more politically engaged.

Despite these efforts, high-profile criticism of Facebook's treatment of fake news, conspiracy theories, hate speech, and similar content continued. For example, many mainstream media outlets considered the temporary suspension of the personal account of Alex Jones, head of the notoriously inaccurate and inflammatory right-wing site InfoWars, in July 2018 to be an inadequate response to the damage caused by his discourse. Facebook did subsequently ban several prominent InfoWars related pages over violations of its hate speech policy. In May 2019, the company officially banned Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, Jones, and a handful of prominent right-wing extremists and White supremacists from the site.

The year 2020, which saw the worldwide spread of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic as well as a highly contentious US presidential election, was also marked by criticism of the amount of harmful misinformation, disinformation, and hateful or even inflammatory speech communicated through social media platforms, particularly Twitter and Facebook. While Facebook, along with other platforms, began making efforts in late 2020 to make changes to aspects such as algorithms and protocols to help limit or prevent the spread of misinformation, disinformation, and inflammatory posts, many critics argued that the company had not done enough quickly enough, as President Trump himself as well as his supporters and general conspiracy theorists had long been posting content that included baseless or false claims regarding the election process as well as COVID-19. After a large group of Trump supporters stormed the US Capitol building on January 6, 2021, to disrupt Congress's certification of Joe Biden's presidential election win, Facebook announced that it had taken Trump's Instagram and Facebook accounts down. By June, in response to its independent Oversight Board, the company announced that it had issued a formal two-year suspension of Trump's accounts. Trump argued that it was unfair censorship and launched his own social media platform, Truth Social, as a direct competitive effort.

Fake news continued to be a concern in the 2020s, especially as the COVID-19 pandemic continued and remained a politically polarizing issue. When COVID-19 vaccines began to be widely available in early 2021, misinformation and outright disinformation about the vaccines spread widely on Facebook and other social media platforms. Even before the pandemic, the company had struggled with anti-vaccine movement propaganda and had claimed in 2019 it would make an effort to crack down on such content. Also in 2021 Facebook announced an effort to combat climate change misinformation.

Controversy over Facebook Live

After Facebook's live-streaming feature, Facebook Live, was made available for public use in January 2016 (having previously been restricted to verified VIP users), the company began drawing criticism for allowing users to stream videos of criminal activity, violence, and even deaths. Facebook's control over and reaction time with regard to such content was limited, as it relied primarily on AI algorithms and user reports to moderate user content. Mathew Ingram reported for Fortune magazine that "in some cases, the company has taken swift action to remove the videos, but in others it has chosen to leave them up with a warning about the disturbing content."

Videos that were allowed to remain with a warning included one in which Chicago resident Antonio Perkins was killed in a drive-by shooting and another in which Minneapolis resident Philando Castile was fatally shot by police while his girlfriend (who filmed and live-streamed the encounter) and her young daughter remained in their pulled-over car. Other violent and otherwise disturbing videos were removed with varying reaction times.

On April 16, 2017, Cleveland resident Robert Godwin Sr. was shot and killed in a video that the killer live-streamed on Facebook. The killer had also posted an earlier video announcing his intention to commit the murder, and he posted one afterward in which he confessed to the crime. Facebook was criticized for leaving the videos up for around two hours, during which time they went viral across multiple social media platforms. Later the same month, a man in Thailand posted videos that showed him killing his eleven-month-old daughter and then hanging himself. The videos remained on Facebook for around twenty-four hours until they were removed. Both cases renewed questions about Facebook's responsibility for the content of its users and how the company could do more to prevent such tragedies. Statements by Facebook personnel disavowed the killers' actions and acknowledged the need for the site to do better in preventing such content from being seen.

In 2019, weeks after a gunman opened fire on mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, and live-streamed at least part of the attacks, which resulted in the deaths of at least fifty people, on Facebook, the company announced that it was instituting new regulations for use of the feature. According to a statement, any users who were in breach of a specific set of rules would be prohibited from using the live-streaming feature for a certain period of time from the moment of their first offense.

Cambridge Analytica, the "Ugly Truth" Memo, and Other Scandals

With considerable negative publicity already surrounding Facebook over live-streamed killings, the proliferation of fake news and its role in US and world politics, and other issues, additional scandals involving the social media giant emerged in late 2017 and early 2018. Content from the leaked documents known as the Paradise Papers, revealed in November 2017, indicated parties linked to the Russian government had made considerable investments in Facebook (and Twitter). One of the individuals involved in the investments, Yuri Milner, was noted to have connections to Jared Kushner, son-in-law of President Donald Trump and an aide in his administration. The revelation furthered concerns over Facebook's political influence and manipulation by those seeking to sway public opinion.

A larger scandal, however, unfolded beginning in March 2018 when it was revealed that tens of millions of Facebook users' personal data had been sold to the British political analysis firm Cambridge Analytica, which had worked on the Trump campaign. Much of the private user data was harvested through apps, with users often unaware. Facebook initially did not acknowledge the data breach, and then suggested the data had been recovered when in fact Cambridge Analytica still had access to it. Facebook also reportedly attempted to stop news of the story from being published. When details of the episode broke, it garnered significant public backlash against Facebook as well as attention from lawmakers in both the United States and Great Britain, who wanted explanations for the data leak and its political ramifications.

Later in March 2018, as Facebook continued to deal with fallout from the Cambridge Analytica situation, another scandal rocked the company. An internal memo was leaked to the public in which Facebook vice president Andrew Bosworth stated that the "ugly truth" was that the company valued its goal of connecting people over any negative effects of that connectivity. For example, the memo suggested, providing connections was worth the potential that they could be used to coordinate a terrorist attack or allow cyberbullying. In addition to further backlash from the public, the leaked memo raised fears of further leaks within the company.

In light of these scandals, Facebook lost nearly $100 billion in market value over the span of a few weeks. In response, Zuckerberg acknowledged that the company faced important challenges, suggesting that it could take several years to properly address the complex issues at play. He made personal apologies for various missteps and promised to improve the Facebook user experience. Zuckerberg also agreed to testify before Congress regarding Facebook's use of user data, appearing in a committee hearing in April 2018. Although some observers wondered whether Congress would ask Zuckerberg to step down, make moves to break up Facebook, or otherwise impose regulations, the hearing had little immediate impact on company operations; Facebook's stock value even resurged somewhat following Zuckerberg's testimony.

In July 2019, it was announced that Facebook had agreed to pay a $5 billion settlement with the FTC reached in response to the company's mishandling of user privacy. As part of the settlement, the company also acquiesced to instituting new oversight policies, particularly setting up an independent privacy committee on Facebook's board to limit Zuckerberg's control over decisions related to the issue. Criticism followed over whether this regulation was strict enough. Later that year, on November 17, the banking data for about 29,000 Facebook employees—which was stored on unencrypted hard drives—was stolen. The hard drives were not reported to be missing until November 20, and Facebook did not inform employees about the data breach until December 13.

In February 2020, Facebook's official Twitter account was hacked by a Saudi Arabian–based group. The same month, Facebook launched the Off-Facebook Activity page, which shows users the offline, non-Facebook related activity information that Facebook collects. Because of the scope of its internet connectivity, an extensive outage that saw Facebook's service inaccessible for several hours in early October 2021 received widespread media coverage.

Corporate Name Change

While the Facebook site and app had continued to remain one of the most popular among social media platforms, in October 2021 its parent company announced that it was changing its longtime name of Facebook and rebranding as Meta. Zuckerberg argued that the corporation had extended its reach and conceptual goals so far past social networking platforms that it did not make sense to continue operating under the name, considered wholly unrepresentative, of just one of its apps. Facebook the app, which would keep its name, was one part, its company's CEO stressed, of a concentrated effort toward creating a "metaverse" in which the technologies of augmented reality and virtual worlds would be combined. Meta would also continue to operate companies Facebook had previously acquired, including Instagram, the rival social media service Facebook bought in 2012, and WhatsApp.

This development was widely discussed in the media, with many observers noting that the move was likely connected to the company's desire to distance itself from past scandals. Notably, highly publicized accusations of a conscious disregard for protecting users' safety had been made by former employees the same month the name change was announced. The idea of the metaverse itself also earned much attention, with prominent commentators poking fun at the concept or otherwise critiquing it.

In November 2022, Zuckerberg announced that Meta would be laying off significant numbers of employees due to financial concerns. The company announced it was cutting over 11,000 jobs, or approximately 13 percent of its workforce, with layoffs affecting multiple departments. Despite myriad controversies, the company's stock and revenues had continued to rise into early 2022. However, that year, with the announcement of the company's rebranding to Meta in late 2021 and the resulting focus on developing the metaverse, proved to be a challenge. In addition, the worldwide economic slowdown and strong competition from social media platforms like TikTok contributed to Meta's financial struggles. The company's stock dropped by about 70 percent during 2022 alone. The company also planned to reduce budgets and implement a hiring freeze.

New functions and updates continued to be added to Facebook, which helped the company dig out of the decline in revenue and user numbers that plagued the company in the early 2020s. In May 2023, the company announced it was launching the Threads application, aimed at competing with Twitter, which had become increasingly volatile under the ownership of controversial business magnate Elon Musk. Within five days of its launch on July 5, Meta reported that Threads had 100 million users and that millions of new users were posting on the app daily in the following weeks. Among the company's goals in 2024 was the increase its use of artificial intelligence (AI) and consumers use of video content.

Impact

In becoming one of the largest social networks in the world, Facebook revolutionized online communications, human connections, activism, and advertising. The site has helped people maintain connections with others in unprecedented ways and has even been used to mobilize grassroots political efforts. However, it has also exposed significant challenges that come with the great influence of social media, including issues of privacy, free speech, misinformation, and even impacts on physical and mental health. As the social network continues to evolve, it will undoubtedly have further new applications (and implications) for corporations, advertisers, governments, law enforcement, and individuals.

Bibliography

Brodkin, Jon. "Facebook to Stop Targeting Ads Based on Race, Sexual Orientation, and Politics." Ars Technica, 9 Nov. 2021, arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/11/facebook-to-stop-microtargeting-ads-based-on-race-sexual-orientation-and-politics/. Accessed 22 May 2024.

Chan, Kelvin. "Facebook Parent Company Meta Launches Threads App as Rival to Twitter." PBS, 6 July 2023, www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/facebook-parent-company-meta-launches-threads-app-as-rival-to-twitter. Accessed 22 May 2024.

Chokshi, Niraj. "Facebook Helped Drive a Voter Registration Surge, Election Officials Say." The New York Times, 12 Oct. 2016, www.nytimes.com/2016/10/13/us/politics/facebook-helped-drive-a-voter-registration-surge-election-officials-say.html. Accessed 22 May 2024.

Collins, Ben. "Facebook to Restrict Livestream Feature after Christchurch Attack." NBC News, 14 May 2019, www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/facebook-restrict-livestream-feature-after-christchurch-attack-n1005741. Accessed 22 May 2024.

Dwoskin, Elizabeth, and Craig Timberg. "Facebook Wanted 'Visceral' Live Video. It's Getting Live-Streaming Killers and Suicides." The Washington Post, 17 Apr. 2017, www.washingtonpost.com/business/technology/facebook-wanted-visceral-live-video-its-getting-suicides-and-live-streaming-killers/2017/04/17/a6705662-239c-11e7-a1b3-faff0034e2de‗story.html. Accessed 22 May 2024.

"Facebook: Daily Active Users Fall for First Time in 18-Year History." BBC News, 3 Feb. 2022, www.bbc.com/news/business-60238565. Accessed 24 May 2024.

Feiner, Lauren, and Salvador Rodriguez. "FTC Slaps Facebook with Record $5 Billion Fine, Orders Privacy Oversight." CNBC, 24 July 2019, www.cnbc.com/2019/07/24/facebook-to-pay-5-billion-for-privacy-lapses-ftc-announces.html. Accessed 22 May 2024.

Frenkel, Sheera, and Adam Satariano. "Meta Lays Off More Than 11,000 Employees." The New York Times, 9 Nov. 2022, www.nytimes.com/2022/11/09/technology/meta-layoffs-facebook.html. Accessed 22 May 2024.

Griffin, Andrew. "Facebook Live: Site Adds Huge New Update to Feature That Lets People Stream in Their Timeline." The Independent, 6 Apr. 2016, www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/facebook-live-site-adds-huge-new-update-to-feature-that-lets-people-stream-in-their-timeline-a6971566.html. Accessed 22 May 2024.

Hern, Alex. "Mark Zuckerberg's Letter Annotated: What He Said and What He Didn't." The Guardian, 17 Feb. 2017, www.theguardian.com/technology/ng-interactive/2017/feb/17/mark-zuckerberg-facebook-letter-annotated-what-he-said-what-he-didnt. Accessed 22 May 2024.

Herrman, John. "What Happens When Facebook Goes the Way of Myspace?" The New York Times, 12 Dec. 2018,www.nytimes.com/2018/12/12/magazine/what-happens-when-facebook-goes-the-way-of-myspace.html. Accessed 22 May 2024.

Hill, Kashmir. "Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg: ‘We've Made a Bunch of Mistakes.'" Forbes, 29 Nov. 2011, www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2011/11/29/facebooks-mark-zuckerberg-weve-made-a-bunch-of-mistakes/. Accessed 22 May 2024.

Ingram, Mathew. "Facebook Killing Another Example of Live Video Feature's Dark Side." Fortune, 17 Apr. 2017, fortune.com/2017/04/17/facebook-killing/. Accessed 22 May 2024.

Isaac, Mike. "Facebook Renames Itself Meta." The New York Times, 22 May 2024, www.nytimes.com/2021/10/28/technology/facebook-meta-name-change.html. Accessed 1 Nov. 2021.

Kirkpatrick, David. The Facebook Effect: The Inside Story of the Company That Is Connecting the World. Simon & Schuster, 2010.

Klein, Ezra. "Mark Zuckerberg on Facebook's Hardest Year, and What Comes Next." Vox, 2 Apr. 2018, www.vox.com/2018/4/2/17185052/mark-zuckerberg-facebook-interview-fake-news-bots-cambridge. Accessed 22 May 2024.

Lincoln, Siân, and Brady Robards. "10 Years of Facebook." New Media & Society, vol. 16, no. 7, 2014, pp. 1047–50, doi:10.1177/1461444814543994. Accessed 22 May 2024.

Mezrich, Ben. The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook, a Tale of Sex, Money, Genius and Betrayal. Doubleday, 2009.

Moscaritolo, Angela, and Chloe Albanesius. "Zuckerberg's Vision for Facebook: A Global Community Backed by AI." PC Magazine, 16 Feb. 2017, www.pcmag.com/news/351809/zuckerbergs-vision-for-facebook-a-global-community-backed. Accessed 22 May 2024.

Newitz, Annalee. "Facebook Fires Human Editors, Algorithm Immediately Posts Fake News." Ars Technica, 29 Aug. 2016, arstechnica.com/business/2016/08/facebook-fires-human-editors-algorithm-immediately-posts-fake-news/. Accessed 22 May 2024.

Olson, Parmy. "Facebook Wants Users to Help It Weed Out Fake News." Forbes, 6 Dec. 2016, www.forbes.com/sites/parmyolson/2016/12/06/facebook-users-fake-news/. Accessed 22 May 2024.

Osnos, Evan. "Can Mark Zuckerberg Fix Facebook Before It Breaks Democracy?" The New Yorker, 17 Sept. 2018,www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/09/17/can-mark-zuckerberg-fix-facebook-before-it-breaks-democracy. Accessed 22 May 2024.

Rosenberg, Matthew, and Sheera Frenkel. "Facebook's Role in Data Misuse Sets of Storms on Two Continents." The New York Times, 18 Mar. 2018, www.nytimes.com/2018/03/18/us/cambridge-analytica-facebook-privacy-data.html. Accessed 22 May 2024.

Silberling, Amanda. "Facebook Surpasses 3 Billion Monthly Active Users." TechCruch, 26 July 2023, techcrunch.com/2023/07/26/facebook-3-billion-users/. Accessed 22 May 2024.

Stinson, Liz. "Facebook Reactions, the Totally Redesigned Like Button, Is Here." Wired, 24 Feb. 2016, www.wired.com/2016/02/facebook-reactions-totally-redesigned-like-button/. Accessed 22 May 2024.

Sulleyman, Aatif. "Facebook Live Killings: Why the Criticism Has Been Harsh." The Independent, 27 Apr. 2017, www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/features/facebook-live-killings-ai-artificial-intelligence-not-blame-fatalities-murders-us-steve-stephens-a7706056.html/. Accessed 22 May 2024.

Ziobro, Paul, and Jeff Horwitz. "Facebook Suspends Donald Trump for at Least Two Years." The Wall Street Journal, 34 June 2021, www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-suspends-donald-trump-for-two-years-11622825480. Accessed 22 May 2024.

Zuckerberg, Mark. "Building Global Community." Facebook, 16 Feb. 2017, www.facebook.com/notes/mark-zuckerberg/building-global-community/10103508221158471/. Accessed 24 May 2024.