The History and Impact of Facebook

 

  

  So many of us have heard the name Facebook before, but whenever we open up this social media network, do we really know how it came to be what it is today? Facebook was invented by Mark Zuckerberg and he is still the current owner today. Zuckerberg originally designed this platform while in college at Harvard University. The original site was called "facemash" and was created as a "hot or not" ranking system for students at the university to rank their peers. Although the site was quickly shut down, Zuckerberg saw potential for a site with a similar purpose which led him to create TheFacebook. TheFacebook was designed exclusively for Harvard students and could only be accessed by a Harvard.edu email address. Soon enough, Zuckerberg branched out his site and allowed for other colleges and universities to gain access, while still remaining off limits to corporations and businesses. Finally, the name was changed to Facebook.

    Since Facebook's rise to success, there have been many issues the company has had to face in regards to privacy. As a new software with access to billions of data points of people's private information, Facebook has had to be adaptive in its ways of learning how to protect its users privacy. However, Facebook has not always been successful in this. In 2018, Facebook had to announce to the public that it was struggling with a bug that  had resulted in about 14 million Facebook users having their default sharing setting for all new posts set to "public". Soon after this in 2019, Facebook faced two more issues of information being leaked. First, there was found to be half a billion records of Facebook users that were found exposed on Amazon cloud servers, containing information about users' friends, likes, groups, and checked-in locations, as well as names, passwords and email addresses. Secondly, it was also discovered that the phone numbers of at least 200 million Facebook users were found to be exposed on an open online database. Lastly, in 2021 the FTC sued Facebook for for deceiving consumers by telling them they could keep their information on Facebook private, and then repeatedly allowing it to be shared and made public. The FTC won the case and Facebook quickly adjusted their privacy policies. 

    Facebook has had a major impact on the social networks that we see today. Facebook was one of the first social networks to exist that allowed for its users to broadcast themselves publicly. Facebook gave the opportunity for its users to post their private information very publicly. By doing this, it became an extremely popular way of connecting with peers. At the height of Facebook's popularity, a large amount of users said that they joined solely due to the "network effect". This refers to people joining for the reason of how many people they already know that are users. Also, due to Facebooks inability to censor any of the information that is posted, Facebook has been known to be a large source for fake news. In 2016, an estimated 44% of the U.S. population stated that they got their news from facebook. This has allowed for so much fake news to be spread and Facebook is unable to do anything about it. With that all being said, we are able to comprehend the significant effects that Facebook has made on communication, as well as the social networks that we all know and love today.