History of Facebook

It expanded to other colleges in the Boston area, the Ivy League,[3] and gradually most universities in the United States and Canada,[4][5] corporations,[6] and by 2006 to everyone with a valid email address along with an age requirement of being 13 or older.

Facebook has been accused of enabling the spread of misinformation and hate speech and influencing political outcomes, prompting debates about content moderation and social media's role in society.

The platform has frequently updated its algorithms to balance user experience with engagement-driven revenue, but these changes have sometimes drawn criticism for amplifying divisive content.

[11] Groups such as Fuerza Latina and the Harvard Association of Black Women protested, and the computer services department filed a complaint with the Administrative Board.

Upon finishing the site, Zuckerberg told a couple of friends, one of whom suggested sharing it on the Kirkland House online mailing list, which included several hundred people.

[25] Zuckerberg was joined in the promotion of the site by Saverin (business aspects), Dustin Moskovitz (programmer), Andrew McCollum (graphic artist), and Chris Hughes.

[76][73] According to the New York Times in 2013, "Mr. Usmanov and other Russian investors at one point owned nearly 10 percent of Facebook, though precise details of their ownership stakes are difficult to assess.

[90][91] In March 2011, it was reported that Facebook was removing about 20,000 profiles daily for violations such as spam, graphic content and underage use, as part of its efforts to boost cyber security.

[92] Statistics showed that Facebook reached one trillion page views in the month of June 2011, making it the most visited website tracked by DoubleClick.

[117] On April 15, 2013, Facebook announced an alliance across 19 states with the National Association of Attorneys General, to provide teenagers and parents with information on tools to manage social networking profiles.

[121] On June 12, Facebook announced that it was introducing clickable hashtags to help users follow trending discussions, or search what others are talking about on a topic.

[137] On April 12, 2016, Zuckerberg outlined his 10-year vision, which rested on three main pillars: artificial intelligence, increased global connectivity, and virtual and augmented reality.

[142] Following the 2016 U.S. presidential election, Facebook announced that it would combat fake news by using fact checkers from sites like FactCheck.org and Associated Press (AP), making reporting hoaxes easier through crowdsourcing, and disrupting financial incentives for abusers.

[170][171] In August 2018, a lawsuit was filed in Oakland, California claiming that Facebook created fake accounts in order to inflate its user data and appeal to advertisers in the process.

[176][177] The Children's Health Defense / World Mercury Project chaired by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Stop Mandatory Vaccination, run by campaigner Larry Cook, posted 54% of the advertisements.

[182][183] NTJ's member Moulavi Zahran Hashim, a radical Islamist imam believed to be the mastermind behind the 2019 Sri Lanka Easter bombings, preached on a pro-ISIL Facebook account, known as "Al-Ghuraba" media.

[191][192] On July 31, 2019, Facebook announced a partnership with University of California, San Francisco to build a non-invasive, wearable device that lets people type by simply imagining themselves talking.

[215][216][217] Facebook has been accused of removing and shadow banning content that spoke either in favor of protesting Indian farmers or against Narendra Modi's government.

[223][224] Unlike competitors such as Substack, Facebook would not take a cut of subscription fees of writers using that platform upon its launch, like Malcolm Gladwell and Mitch Albom.

According to The Washington Post technology writer Will Oremus, the move was criticized by those who viewed it as a tactic intended by Facebook to force those competitors out of business.

[226] In November 2021, Facebook stated it would stop targeting ads based on data related to health, race, ethnicity, political beliefs, religion and sexual orientation.

He also detailed accounts from analysts predicting a "death spiral" for Facebook stock as users leave, ad impressions increase, and the company chases revenue.

[236] The outage cut off Facebook's internal communications, preventing employees from sending or receiving external emails, accessing the corporate directory, and authenticating to some Google Docs and Zoom services.

[237][238] The outage had a major impact on people in the developing world, who depend on Facebook's "Free Basics" program, affecting communication, business and humanitarian work.

[246] The shutdown of the technology will reportedly also stop Facebook's automated alt text system, used to transcribe media on the platform for visually impaired users.

[272][269] According to the New York Times in 2013, "Mr. Usmanov and other Russian investors at one point owned nearly 10 percent of Facebook, though precise details of their ownership stakes are difficult to assess.

[278] In August 2009, Facebook acquired social media real-time news aggregator FriendFeed,[279] a startup created by Gmail's first engineer Paul Buchheit.

[101] Writers at TechCrunch, on the other hand, expressed skepticism, stating, "That's a big multiple to live up to, and [Facebook] will likely need to add bold new revenue streams to justify the mammoth valuation".

[304] On 22 May, regulators from Wall Street's Financial Industry Regulatory Authority announced that they had begun to investigate whether banks underwriting Facebook had improperly shared information only with select clients, rather than the general public.

[305] The allegations sparked "fury" among some investors and led to the immediate filing of several lawsuits, one of them a class action suit claiming more than $2.5 billion in losses due to the IPO.