A tale of two social media views, with Meta taking the spotlight
Facebook is synonymous with going online, but it has also been the focus of much controversy
To utterly mangle the tritest of Dickensian quotations, the past week was the best of times and the worst of times for Meta and its original social app, which has come to define the “age of foolishness” but sadly not the “epoch of incredulity”.
Facebook marked 20 years at the weekend since cofounder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg went live with what was then an app for connecting university (or college, since we’re stateside in this flashback) students.
Thefacebook.com — burdened as it was by the definite article — was an evolutionary leap from the “attractiveness” ranking site Facemash Zuckerberg had launched the year before.
Less than five years after that launch Zuckerberg was the only founder still in an executive chair. He was at the helm as Facebook first turned a profit (2009), listed (2012), and rebranded as Meta Platforms (2021) with the promise of ushering in the new metaverseled age of digital life.
I don’t want to imagine a return to the Facemash protype, built as it was on such shallow selling points, but I do think one benefit of the early iterations was the prerequisite of having a verifiable university email address to create a profile.
No, I’m not saying you need a matriculation with exception to “play”, but the parents sitting vigil at the US Senate hearings on “Big tech and the online child sexual exploitation crisis” may have welcomed this approximation of a minimum, verifiable age restriction.
Zuckerberg was summoned to answer questions before the Senate judiciary committee, alongside the leaders of TikTok, Snapchat and others — as well as an audience that included many parents of child victims who suffered harm, abuse and whose lives have ended because of — the parents believe — their experiences on social media apps.
Of course, the hearings sound important, but I can’t help thinking we have been here before and will be again if we can’t move from questioning to action.
SHATTERED RECORDS
You know what is a great way to shrug off the bad press from a bruising Senate hearing and sage-smudge your way free of the (metaphorical) ghosts of dead kids? A financial distraction might do it.
Late last week Meta dropped some big green news that swiftly shifted the tone of coverage. It had not only blasted through fourth-quarter sales and outlook forecasts, driving share price gains, it even declared its first-yet quarterly dividend, and accordingly shattered market records with the biggest-yet single-day increase in market value (20.3%) when its capitalisation swelled by $197bn to $1.2-trillion.
Mind you, that’s not an “intraschool” achievement — as I first read this banner claim — but rather of any company’s market value. The Financial Times clarified it: “Meta’s move eclipsed previous records that saw Amazon and Apple each jump about $190bn in a single day in 2022.”
The market did a quick little rebalancing shortly after. Barrons reports that shares of Meta Platforms dipped 3% on Monday, softening the doubledigit gains of last week. Still, now we’re all refocused, and the media (and Meta’s assessors) can get back to worrying about Zuck’s “risky” passion for martial arts.
Is it fair to ask Zuck to apologise to those parents (or others)? That was something I wondered while catching up on the blow-by-blow of the hearings. The causality between inciting incidents and abuse, suicide deaths or other (profound) harms is hard to chart, more so than the effects of cigarettes and workplace carcinogen exposure.
Furthermore, many loved ones of victims may find such an apology inadequate, even distasteful. I also wondered about the legality of making an apology: would Meta’s lawyers have urged Zuckerberg to make no such “concessions”, fearing a slippery slope into liability? The fact that it was soon transcribed and up on the Meta blog suggests it was more company position than being moved to spontaneous remarks.
But this column is not a court of law built on the principle of “beyond reasonable doubt”. Rather, I think I can make a good claim for a “preponderance of evidence” if we review the past two decades. It’s not just the big dramas that must be considered, the Cambridge Scandalyticas in the rear-view mirror. Between independent studies and hushed-up-thenleaked internal reports, research has shown how social media as a whole — and Facebook within that — have negatively affected mental health, self-esteem, anxiety, cyberbullying and eating disorders, particularly within the youth and vulnerable.
We have documented failings in the platform’s efforts to curb human — and wildlife — trafficking, deepfakes and disinformation — not to mention privacy violations, election interference and incitement to violence linked to genocide and so-called ethnic cleansing.
If Facebook were a political party, would we re-elect it based on this track record? Actually, perhaps South Africans should sit out of that particular poll ... My point is, sure, we like — even love — our “free” social tools. You cannot separate me from my WhatsApp most days. About half the world — about 4billion people — make use of the Meta suite, including Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp. In some nations, Facebook is synonymous with going online.
Even if it isn’t tangoing with Apple for most valuable company title — as Microsoft is
— it has immense influence and reach. That too is a measure of power. It is arguably far closer to the world domination and “companies over countries” that Zuckerberg reportedly promised his staffers way back when, as claimed by former employees. And, as covered above, it’s no slouch in the financial domination department either.
Happy birthday, Facebook, here’s to the existential dread the rest of us adults enjoy with every passing year. But, let us all remember, it is a privilege to be allowed to grow up.