Facebook turns 20: From Mark Zuckerberg's dormitory to a tn company

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Facebook turns 20: From Mark Zuckerberg’s dormitory to a $1tn company

Published

1 year ago

February 4, 2024

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Facebook is 20 years old today.

On 4 February 2004 Mark Zuckerberg launched ‘thefacebook.com’ from his Harvard dormitory.

Two decades later, many users struggle to remember a time they weren’t scrolling through its news feed – or that of its social media sibling, Instagram.

While allowing us to find long-lost friends and family, and supporting small businesses, its 20-year history has been chequered with controversy – from the Cambridge Analytica scandal and allegations of election interference, to lacking protections against harmful content.

Here we look back at the last 20 years – and what could be in store for the trillion-dollar tech company.

2004

When computer science and psychology student Mark Zuckerberg launched thefacebook.com, it was only for students like him – and not open to the wider public.

It was designed so they could exchange posts, messages, and create a network of ‘friends’.

Its mainstay was the ‘wall’, where users could publish posts or write on others.

Facebook was hot on the heels of its early 2000s rival MySpace and was not monetised so refreshingly free of advertising.

But just a few days after it launched, three of Zuckerberg’s fellow Harvard students accused him of stealing their idea for a similar social network they had created called ConnectU. Twins Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss and Divya Narendra claimed Zuckerberg had helped them with ConnectU, but eventually agreed to settle their legal case in 2008 – in exchange for $65m (£51m), including Facebook shares, and their ConnectU business.

By the end of the year, Facebook already had a million users.

2005

You couldn’t upload photos on Facebook until 2005, when the ability to sub-categorise pictures into albums provided the first platform for the ‘photo dump’.

The inclusion of photos on Facebook also gave birth to the concept of the ‘profile picture’.

The year after the launch, Zuckerberg also decided to drop the ‘the’ and bought the domain name Facebook.com for $200,000 (£170,000) from a company called AboutFace Corporation.

2006

A year before the first iPhone was released, Facebook launched a bespoke mobile site for the first generation of smartphone users.

On 26 September 2006 Facebook expanded beyond university students for the first time – allowing anyone with an email address over the age of 18 to join.

With the expansion came the news feed, giving users a curated selection of their friends’ posts, and the wider world the concept of ‘scrolling’.

2006 was also the first year Facebook faced major controversy. Zuckerberg was forced to apologise after his Beacon feature, which sent data to third parties to create targeted ads, began showing users’ purchasing history on their profiles without their consent. Eventually people could opt to turn the feature off.

2007

Facebook’s fourth year brought with it several firsts – videos, ads, Marketplace and pages.

Introducing advertising created huge revenue streams and gave businesses a new way of selling themselves online.

Pages also meant companies and other organisations could create mini-professional profiles that were distinct from personal ones.

On a smaller consumer scale, individual users could advertise goods for sale.

2008

Facebook launched its own instant messenger ‘chat’ in March 2008, which became a separate app entirely known as ‘messenger’ in 2011.

With the iPhone came a dedicated Facebook app, separate from its mobile site.

A second major data breach saw the dates of birth of more than 80 million users published on the platform.

2009

This was the year of the ‘like’ button.

And to rival Twitter, which had launched in 2006, Facebook also introduced tagging for photos, posts, and comments.

2010

January 2010 saw Facebook’s first purpose-built data centre open in Oregon.

By the middle of the year the site had reached 500 million users, with ‘groups’ also added for the first time.

In October, The Social Network film was released. Starring Jesse Eisenberg as Zuckerberg, it set out to tell the story of Facebook’s beginnings and the subsequent battle between its founder and the Winklevoss twins. Although it was a huge success in Hollywood, Zuckerberg criticised parts of it for being inaccurate.

2011

In 2011, Facebook began its long and complex relationship with law enforcement.

The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) sued it for multiple breaches of its privacy policy. These included users’ friends list being public even when they had made them private, and non-consensual sharing of their personal data with advertising companies.

By 2023, the FTC was on its third case against Facebook.

2011 was also the year the much-loved Facebook wall was replaced with a timeline.

2012

In April 2012, Facebook bought Instagram for $1bn (£0.8bn) and in May it was floated on the stock market for the first time.

Zuckerberg said he bought the photo-sharing app because it was a “threat” to Facebook’s future and the IPO was one of the biggest and most anticipated in history, with an estimated share value of $104bn (£82.2bn).

Oculus, a Facebook-owned brand, also produced its first virtual reality headset.

Later that year the platform reached a new milestone of one billion users – a seventh of the world’s population.

2013

In June 2013 a bug saw the email addresses and phone numbers of six million Facebook users accessible online.

It was thought to have been an issue since the year before but was only spotted in 2013.

In terms of features, this year saw users able to edit their posts retrospectively and share stickers as well as emojis.

2014

Two years after the acquisition of Instagram, Facebook bought WhatsApp for 19 times the amount. WhatsApp was created in 2009 for iPhone by a former Yahoo employee.

Today more than half of the world’s internet users have WhatsApp.

2015

At the very end of 2015 the Cambridge Analytica scandal was first reported by The Guardian and The New York Times.

Over the next few years it emerged that the UK-based political consultancy firm had harvested millions of Facebook users’ data for various clients without their consent.

The scandal implicated US politicians, and the Vote Leave campaign, among others. Eventually the UK Information Commissioner ruled the firm was not involved in the Brexit referendum beyond “some initial enquiries… in the early stages” by UKIP.

It was hugely damaging for Facebook’s reputation and its finances.

2016

As self-shooting live broadcasts became more and more of a feature on the internet, Facebook Live was launched.

Three years later it was used by terrorist Brenton Tarrant as he carried out the Christchurch Mosque shootings in New Zealand, which killed 51 people and left 40 injured.

AI now exists to help Facebook identify and block people from filming themselves carrying out atrocities.

2017

A year after stories became a feature on Instagram, Zuckerberg and his developers introduced them on Facebook.

In a less popular move, Facebook 360 was launched to enable users to upload panoramic photos to their profiles.

2018

The Cambridge Analytica scandal came to a head in 2018, with a raid of their London offices and the company eventually disbanding.

It led to Zuckerberg being compelled to appear before US Congress to answer questions for the first time.

Facebook also suffered the fallout of another data breach that year in which hackers accessed logins of 50 million users.

And former deputy prime minister Nick Clegg joined the company as vice president of global affairs. He has since been promoted to president.

2019

Three separate data breaches continued to chip away at Facebook’s image in 2019.

The first saw 540 million users’ data made public, the second happened when Facebook “unintentionally” released emails of more than 1.5 million people, and the third saw the names, phone numbers and usernames of 267 million people made public.

In response to privacy concerns, Meta says it’s since invested $5.5bn (£4.3bn) to tackle the issue, with a team of 3,000 people worldwide.

“As expectations around privacy evolve, it’s critical for companies to continue investing in guardrails and processes to meet people’s privacy needs and expectations,” it said in a recent statement.

2020

A second FTC case against Facebook resulted in a court order banning it from monetising data acquired from profiles of users under 18 and limiting its use of AI.

This year, as part of its response to the Cambridge Analytica scandal, Facebook agreed to “fundamentally shift our approach to protecting people’s privacy” and paid a $5bn (£3.9bn) fine.

2021

As COVID continued to separate people all over the world from their loved ones, Zuckerberg announced Facebook Inc would become Meta.

Not only was Meta a parent company for Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and other assets, it also laid the groundwork for the ‘Metaverse’.

In its launch announcement, Zuckerberg described it as “letting you share immersive experiences with other people even when you can’t be together – and do things together you couldn’t do in the physical world” and the “next evolution in a long line of social technologies”.

In December 2021 a joint $150m (£118m) lawsuit sued Facebook over allegations it failed to address misinformation that promoted the genocide of Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar.

In response, Meta created a Myanmar-specific policy to remove praise, support, and advocacy of violence by Myanmar security forces and protesters on all its platforms. It has also banned the Myanmar military itself, including any pages, groups, and accounts representing military-controlled businesses.

Its latest statement added: “Our team continues to monitor the situation on the ground in Myanmar and we will continue to take any action necessary to keep our community safe.”

2022

Meta’s safeguarding measures against harmful content came under unprecedented scrutiny in 2022 when a UK coroner ruled that “negative online content” had played a role in someone’s suicide for the first time.

The case was that of Molly Russell, a 14-year-old schoolgirl from London, who was found dead in her bedroom in 2017.

Her father Ian campaigned against under-regulated tech companies after evidence emerged she had viewed content that promoted self-harm and suicide on platforms such as Instagram and Pinterest.

The firm’s head of health and wellbeing, Elizabeth Lagone, attended the hearing in person and said many posts viewed by Molly would have violated Instagram’s policies, for which she apologised.

2023

By 2023 the Metaverse had begun to cost its parent company dearly.

By the end of the year, Meta Reality Labs had haemorrhaged $46.5bn (£36bn). As such, 2023 quickly became Zuckerberg’s self-proclaimed “year of efficiency” with 21,000 planned job cuts.

Meanwhile, Meta honed in on its rival X, formerly Twitter, which had not long been bought outright by Elon Musk. To do so it launched its own subscription service – Meta verified – and a separate X-style app for Instagram called Threads.

By the end of the year, Meta was also facing its third privacy case from the FTC in the US.

So what’s next?

In 2024 and beyond, Facebook’s challenges remain largely the same as recent years – and revolve mainly around misinformation and regulation.

Fears over profitability when billions were lost following the launch of the Metaverse in 2021 appear to have been reversed, with share prices reaching an all-time high.

Social media consultant and industry analyst Matt Navara says this is largely to do with job cuts that have enabled Zuckerberg’s AI work on the Metaverse to be a cash cow for the ad revenue business.

Similarly, the threat once posed by TikTok has mostly subsided with the success of Instagram Reels and TikTok’s growth plateauing. Meta has also benefited from Elon Musk’s takeover and rebranding of X, which has facilitated the launch of a rival app Threads.

Mr Navarra comments that Meta has often proved “like Teflon” in that “nothing very bad seems to stick for long”.

But as 2024 began for Zuckerberg answering awkward questions around online harms in the US Senate, it appears legislation that could curb how Meta’s platform operate is “closer than ever”.

“We’re at the point where it’s hard for US lawmakers to do nothing, with bipartisan support for new regulation coming through.”

But he says questions remain on how impactful legislation would be – as has been in the case in the UK and Europe.

Meta has already said it will stop under-18s from being able to view harmful content about self-harm and eating disorders.

And in a year when two billion people are going to the polls in elections, misinformation will be Meta’s ultimate test.

“All platforms will face criticism,” Mr Navarra says. “There will be headlines around the abuse of AI and what Meta’s role has been. It probably has the most advanced automated systems in place to tackle it, but undoubtedly things will slip through the cracks and I suspect it’ll never be enough.”

Beyond this year, Mr Navarra predicts that Zuckerberg’s vision of the Metaverse is still “someway out”, and possibly into the next decade, with virtual reality headsets unlikely to be commercially viable until at least 2027.

2024

So far in 2024, Meta has promised to hide content that promotes self-harm and eating disorders on Facebook and Instagram.

It says it plans to use the 40,000 staff it has working on safety and security worldwide and the $20bn invested since 2016 to make further progress on those issues.

And Zuckerberg has appeared before the US Senate, apologising to families whose children have fallen victim to online sexual exploitation on his platforms.

In response to this year’s elections, Meta has promised to block new political ads during the final week of the US election campaign and will require advertisers to disclose when they use AI in social or political posts.

Shares skyrocketed when it was announced shareholders would receive dividends from Meta for the first time at the start of February.

World

New US plan for Gaza starting to emerge despite sanitised tour for Trump peace envoy

Published

6 hours ago

August 3, 2025

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New US plan for Gaza starting to emerge despite sanitised tour for Trump peace envoy

We’ve seen this many times before.

Highly anticipated talks and meetings with America, Israel’s closest ally and the one country with the power to pressure Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to change course, then nothing changes.

We need to give Steve Witkoff time to report his assessments back to the White House before we can give a complete verdict on this visit but what we’ve seen and heard so far has offered little hope.

The pressure on Donald Trump to stop the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza is mounting after a small but vocal contingent of his base expressed outrage.

Even one of his biggest supporters in Congress, Marjorie Taylor Green, has referred to it as a genocide.

It was little coincidence Mr Witkoff was dispatched to the region for the first time in three months to speak to people on both sides and “learn the truth” to quote US ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, who accompanied him to an aid site in Gaza.

The pair spent five hours in Gaza speaking to people at a Gaza Humanitarian Foundation centre and it’s understood saw nothing of the large crowd of Palestinians gathering a mile away waiting for food.

Their sanitised tour of Gaza did not include a visit to a hospital where medics are receiving casualties by the dozen from deadly incidents at aid sites, and where they’re treating children for malnutrition and hunger.

A critical trauma nurse at Nasser hospital told us a 13-year-old boy was among the people shot while Mr Witkoff was in the enclave.

An American paediatrician at the same hospital who had publicly extended an invitation to meet with Mr Witkoff heard nothing from the US delegation.

Dr Tom Adamkiewicz described people “being shot like rabbits” and “a new level of barbarity that I don’t think the world has seen”.

The US delegation was defensive of the controversial GHF aid distribution that was launched by America and Israel in May, hailing its delivery of a million meals a day.

But if their new system of feeding Gaza is truly working, why are we seeing images of starved children and hearing deaths every day of people in search of food?

The backdrop of this trip is very different to the last time Mr Witkoff was here.

In May, life was a struggle for Palestinians in Gaza, people were dying in Israeli bombings but, for the most part, people weren’t dying due to a lack of food or getting killed trying to reach aid.

Mr Netanyahu’s easing of humanitarian conditions a week ago, allowing foreign aid to drop from the sky, was an indirect admission of failure by the GHF.

Yet, for now, the US is standing by this highly criticised way of delivering aid.

A UN source tells me more aid is getting through than it was a week ago – around 30 lorries are due to enter today compared to around five that were getting in each day before.

Still nowhere near enough and it’s a complex process of clearances and coordination with the IDF through areas of conflict.

Lorries are regularly refused entry without explanation.

Then there was Mr Witkoff’s meeting with hostage families a day later where we began to get a sense of America’s new plan for Gaza.

The US issued no public statement but family members shared conversations they’d had with Mr Trump’s envoy: bring all the hostages home in one deal, disarm Hamas and end the war. Easier to propose than to put into practice.

Within hours of those comments being reported in the Israeli media, Hamas released a video of hostage Evyatar David looking emaciated in an underground tunnel in Gaza.

Now 24 years old, he was kidnapped from the Nova festival on 7 October and is one of 20 hostages understood to be still alive. The release of the video was timed for maximum impact.

Hamas also poured water on any hopes of a deal in a statement, refusing to disarm unless an independent Palestinian state is established.

Hamas has perhaps become more emboldened in this demand after key Israeli allies, including the UK, announced plans for formal recognition in the last week.

It’s hard to see a way forward. The current Israeli government has, in effect, abandoned the idea of a two-state solution.

The Trump administration’s recent boycott of international conferences on the matter suggests America is taking a similar line, breaking with its long-standing position.

Arab nations could now be key in what happens next.

In an unprecedented move, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Egypt joined a resolution calling for Hamas to disarm and surrender control of Gaza following a UN conference earlier this week.

This is hugely significant – highly influential powers in its own backyard have not applied this sort of pressure before.

For all the US delegation’s good intentions, it’s still political deadlock. Israeli hostages and Palestinians in Gaza left to starve and suffer the consequences.

World

Sydney Harbour Bridge pro-Palestine protest so busy it was ‘perilous’, police chief says

Published

9 hours ago

August 3, 2025

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Sydney Harbour Bridge pro-Palestine protest so busy it was 'perilous', police chief says

Tens of thousands of Sydney residents marched across the city’s iconic Harbour Bridge to support Palestinians in Gaza and call for an end to the war.

The decision to centre the protest on such an iconic landmark was controversial. The bridge is considered a symbol of unity in the city.

However, the Israel-Hamas war has been deeply divisive in Australia and increased tension between the country’s Jewish and Muslim communities.

On Sunday there were pro-Palestinian demonstrations in Melbourne, Adelaide and Sydney.

In Sydney organisers hoped 50,000 people would attend, despite heavy rain.

In the end, the bridge and the central business district were so packed – and the weather so bad – that police and organisers called the march off mid-way, fearing there would be a crush in the crowd.

Police said the crowd numbers in the Sydney Harbour Bridge march were “far greater” than expected, creating the risk of a crowd crush.

“It was perilous,” said senior officer Peter McKenna, adding his force was “very lucky the crowd was well-behaved”.

The final figures for the number of people who attended haven’t been released. But it was an impressive turnout in the tens of thousands.

Some of those attending the march, called by its organisers the March for Humanity, carried pots and pans as symbols of the hunger in the besieged enclave of Gaza.

There was also a surprise guest, Wikileaks founder Julian Assange.

He has largely kept a low profile since his release from a British prison last year. He didn’t speak to the crowd, but he was among those leading the march.

However, the demonstration almost didn’t happen after New South Wales police tried to stop it from taking place on the Harbour Bridge.

On Saturday, the country’s Supreme Court ruled it could go ahead.

Despite the rain, there were families with children and seniors as well. It was a true cross-section of Australian society.

One of the protesters, Sarah, drove up from the Blue Mountains outside Sydney to attend.

She said, “enough is enough” and the Australian government should take “stronger action”.

Sarah also said Australians want people to know they care about what’s happening in the world.

Australia has not joined France, the UK and Canada is announcing plans to recognise a Palestinian state in September.

The government here says recognition is a matter of “when not if”. But it has not committed to any timeline.

Public pressure is growing on Prime Minister Anthony Albanese to take a stronger stand against the war. So far, he has largely resisted that pressure.

But the government’s language towards Israel is becoming more critical.

World

Just 36 aid trucks entered Gaza yesterday, Palestinian officials claim – short of 600 needed

Published

15 hours ago

August 3, 2025

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Just 36 aid trucks entered Gaza yesterday, Palestinian officials claim - short of 600 needed

Just 36 aid trucks entered Gaza on Saturday – despite the humanitarian situation in the enclave worsening, Palestinian officials have warned.

According to the Gazan government’s media office, most of the humanitarian supplies were looted and stolen – “as a result of the state of security chaos that the Israeli occupation systematically and deliberately perpetuates”.

Officials say at least 600 truckloads of aid are required on a daily basis, adding: “The needs of the population are worsening.”

A statement released late last night called for “the immediate opening of crossings, and the entry of aid and infant formula in sufficient quantities” – and “condemned in the strongest terms the continuation of the crime of starvation”.

Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, refuted this – and accused Hamas of “stirring up a slanderous propaganda campaign against Israel”.

He said: “The cruelty of Hamas has no boundaries. While the State of Israel is allowing the entry of humanitarian aid to the residents of Gaza, the terrorists of Hamas are deliberately starving our hostages and document them in a cynical and evil manner.

“The terrorists of Hamas are deliberately starving the residents of the Strip as well, preventing them from receiving the aid.”

It comes as the Palestinian Red Crescent in Gaza said its headquarters in Khan Younis were hit by an Israeli strike, killing one staff member and injuring three others.

Footage posted on social media shows a fire broke out in the building.

Indirect negotiations between Hamas and Israel for a 60-day ceasefire, and a deal for the release of half the hostages still held in Gaza, ended in deadlock last week.

US President Donald Trump’s Middle East envoy told the families of the hostages yesterday that he was working with the Israeli government on a plan that would end the war.

Steve Witkoff claimed that Hamas was willing to disarm to stop the conflict, despite the group’s repeated statements that it would not do so.

In response, Hamas said it would not disarm unless an independent Palestinian state is established with Jerusalem as its capital.

After Mr Witkoff’s meeting with the families of the hostages, Hamas released two videos of an emaciated Israeli hostage, Evyatar David, who was abducted from the Nova music festival on 7 October 2023 and has been held in captivity in Gaza since.

The 24-year-old looked skeletal, with his shoulder blades protruding from his back. He was heard saying that he had not eaten for three days. The distressing videos show him digging his own grave, he said in the footage.