Steven Levy: Facebook. It was expected to be so beautiful

Steven Levy, a technology specialist, a writer with many years of experience, collected materials on Zuckerberg for 3 years, accompanying its founder in professional and private situations. ‘Facebook. And it was expected to be so beautiful” is simply a firsthand report, and at the same time a live, individual study on a task that completely changed the world. And I don't want to halt there. (from the publisher's mate).

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Preface

– I am arrogant to announce that our company is now called Meta.

These are the words of Mark Zuckerberg, a thirty-eight-year-old founder, CEO and ruler of Facebook, the largest social network in the world, and a company that virtually changed the world, for better or worse. They fell on October 28, 2021 during the Connect conference – an yearly gathering of developers working for the Facebook virtual reality platform, called Oculus. The conference took place in virtual mode: the COVID-19 pandemic made the company gotta cancel meetings in real time.

In another sense, the deficiency of a physical gathering reflected Zuckerberg's conviction that 1 day we would have fun, establish relationships and conduct business as fancy avatars in a digital metasphere called metaverses (a word borrowed from Neal Stephenson's dystopian fresh Blur). There is not yet a technology that will enable us, we are not even close to its development, and Zuckerberg's speech was recorded earlier in a kind resembling papers from the current information, alternatively of being a holographic message in real time, how it is expected to happen in the future according to his imagination.

Except Zuckerberg believes in the future so powerfully that he changed the name of 1 of the most valuable companies in the planet to just reflect unproven technology in it as a business model.

It was amazing. The application called Facebook – a product from a dormitory that consumes the infinite time of billions of people – no of which placed in 1 line with another products collected under the Meta brand.

– We are inactive a company that creates technology around people," Zuckerberg said from his surviving area or place that made specified an impression. (I was in his surviving area and he looks alternatively ordinary.) – But now we have a fresh Polar Star that will aid bring metaverses into our lives. We besides have a fresh name that reflects the full of what we do and the future we want to aid create.

But was the ambitious imagination the only origin that led to this change? Facebook critics – or Meta – feel differently. They claim that it is definitely associated with the dirt that has been irrevocably attached to the Facebook brand. Indeed, in the weeks preceding the event, there was a flood of appalling information based on thousands of pages of interior documents, which dominated media reports on Facebook – already very critical of him after the 2016 U.S. presidential election, erstwhile it turned out that the creation of Mark Zuckerberg – originally a student site – could harm democracy.

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The origin of the last leak was the product manager in Facebook's integrity department. After spending years in Google, Yelp and Pinterest Frances Haugen – born just like Zuckerberg in 1984 – she joined the company in 2019 and was expected to address disinformation problems. 1 of her loved ones radicalized under the influence of social media, which besides frequently happens on Facebook, and Haugen as an experienced engineer and product manager decided she could aid in this area. But what she came across frightened her. On Facebook, nothing was made of content published on a website outside the United States, which was much worse than the national problems it was expected to face.

Too frequently there were no harmful posts, sometimes even encouraging violence, and in any cases they were not even deliberately removed due to the fact that they were placed in power.

– After 2 weeks of starting work, I thought, “God, this is much worse than I expected,” Haugen told me. “I think in about 2 1000 20 years I realized that many people’s lives were at stake.”

She quit her job, as did many another colleagues who did not approve of the company. Unlike others, she first methodically reviewed the interior e-mails to gather evidence that Facebook was aware of his actions. They showed that the steering wheel – including Zuckerberg – was besides frequently incapable to face problems. And these referred to Instagram posts that exacerbated depression in a teenager or spreading spiritual hatred in India. The papers were first published by the "Wall Street Journal" in October 2021 and then replicated by many media houses. The publication sparked the sensation and legislature of the United States and institutions in another countries invited Haugen to tell them what she had learned. Senator Edward Markey of Massachusetts spoke most likely on behalf of the full body erstwhile he called Haugen "an American hero of the 21st century".

This was a visible contrast to Zuckerberg's last appearance before legislature – the seventh, in turn, no of them were pleasant – during which legislators ridiculed him, unsuccessfully trying to get clear answers to their questions. Behind their hostility was the movement demanding the regulation of Facebook or punishing him for violating anti-trust regulations. In December 2020, the national Trade Commission and 46 state prosecutors filed a suit in court against Facebook (it was then rejected by courts, but the Commission yet filed it with sharper arguments in August 2021). In the center of the suit there was an incorrect acquisition of 2 companies: Instagram and WhatsApp, respectively in 2012 and 2014.

That's not all. Legislators and regulators around the planet have attacked Facebook for its deficiency of supervision over content posted by users, privacy policy and behaviour relating to social justice and diversity.

It has been widely believed that the alleged large Tech, the 4 largest dominant companies in the industry, are not only besides large, but besides monopolistic, anticompetitive, unfriendly to workers and even destructive to democracy.

From this 4th Facebook and its leader were most stigmatized. A fresh president appeared in the United States – who managed to scope for power despite the attack on Capitol being overturned by Zuckerberg's platforms and late moves to halt it. president Biden nominated the heads of the national Trade Commission and the Antitrust Department of Justice, whose attitude to large Tech and Facebook was unequivocally hostile.

In all this, however, there is any irony: no of these problems seriously weakened Facebook's finances. due to the fact that people utilized the company more frequently during the pandemic, the company inactive made quite a few money. In 2020, it recorded gross of $86 billion, including nearly 33 billion in profit. In the early summertime of 2021, her shares were worth a full of $1 trillion. Mark Zuckerberg's individual property reached $70 billion, making him 1 of the richest people in the world.

Perhaps all these successes made Zuckerberg feel entitled to change the subject erstwhile critics pointed to errors in protecting users of its services and society as a whole. The day Frances Haugen appeared on a popular tv show 60 minutesZuckerberg posted a recording of his household on a yacht floating across San Francisco Bay. Shortly after, he appeared at the Connect conference, virtually announcing to the planet that Facebook is now called Meta.

Watching this ad from my metaverse corner, I had mixed feelings. In the end, I am the author of the book – the book you hold in your hand – with the name Facebook in the title. I talked to hundreds of people to draw the final version of the communicative about how the company merged the planet and what happened afterwards. I spoke to Zuckerberg myself 9 times, gaining exceptional access to his thoughts. Is Facebook's boss now changing his story, subtracting bubbles from the sparkling potion of Facebook's communicative as we know it?

On the contrary. Now that Zuckerberg and Meta effort to re-imagine reality, knowing what a company previously known as Facebook has become even more important.

All the Facebook problems that have late occurred are coming out of the communicative I wrote in the book. Zuckerberg's boldness. His dreams outlined in a modest notebook. The relentless emphasis on growth. Compromises made by the company regarding the privacy of users as the platform developed. A hasty pursuit of the globalisation of Facebook before it had the ability to monitor content appearing on the website. Finally, political decisions made at a time erstwhile Facebook proved to be an crucial origin in presidential elections and even disinformation campaigns. And yes, ruthless acquisitions of possible competitors, including Instagram or WhatsApp. (I heard that my book was well received by legislators and regulators investigating Facebook's activities.)

Many Facebook employees you will meet on the pages of this book were no longer employed there erstwhile they spoke to me. Since then, others have joined them. method manager Mike Schroepfer announced his departure in October 2021. David Marcus, who headed the failed cryptocurrency project, announced he would leave in December 2021. But inactive the firm's strictest leadership is made up of Zuckerberg's most ardent supporters, including Christopher Cox [1] and Andrew Bosworth's “God” who lead 2 Meta guns – social media and a virtual reality project. The minute I compose these words, Sheryl Sandberg continues to work for Facebook, but in the critical period in which she was expected to defend the company, she did not execute publicly. It is suspected that erstwhile Zuckerberg stabilizes the company's relocation to another realities, Sandberg will take on fresh challenges.

And Mark Zuckerberg? He's not going anywhere unless he goes to the metavers.

From this book you will learn that he is simply a stubborn and relentless leader, in addition to who likes to compete. Even an antitrust investigation can't halt him. In fact, he was banned from carrying out crucial acquisitions, but he adheres to his plan B, so erstwhile others come up with an thought that could harm Facebook's business, he replicates their moves.

When an app called Clubhouse gained popularity with spontaneous audio encounters, Zuckerberg immediately responded by cloned this service on Facebook. But the biggest threat is TikTok, a Chinese community app based on sharing video recordings that has gained over a billion users and is much more popular among youth than the services that Zuckerberg controls. That's why there was a Reels service on Instagram, which brazenly downloaded the thought from TikToka.

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What is it about changing the name to Meta and creating a company in a metaverse? It was a reaction to a Facebook-threatening event: erstwhile a portal designed for usage on computers was incapable to find itself during the abrupt emergence in popularity of mobile technologies – the book will tell you that Facebook even tried to make its own smartphone to challenge Apple and Google. Although he managed to get out of these problems with a defensive hand, Zuckerberg promised himself that he would lead the next technological change. That's why he bought the company Oculus dealing with virtual reality – this movement seemed unusual in 2014. Although the acquisition has yielded small profit (and the founders of the company shortly lost), Zuckerberg never lost his passion for this vision. While working on the book, I frequently ran into him on campus in Menlo Park, and it always turned out that at the minute he was the most excited about something related to Oculus or the laboratory of Virtual Reality Research.

Now he optimistically looks at virtual reality and expanded as the Polar Star of the company.

But the full Facebook mosaic is much denser and full of disturbing threads that Zuckerberg prefers not to see.

On these pages I effort to present them as best I can, and besides draw a full communicative about 1 of the most crucial companies in the world: Facebook. No substance what Mark Zuckerberg wants to call her.

December 1, 2021

Footnotes:
[1] Cox left after Systrom was expelled from Instagram, but returned to the company in June 2020.

Steven Levy, Facebook. And it was expected to be so beautiful, publishing home Mova, 2022, translation by Katarzyna Sosnowska