Media giant, Facebook, has an ever-increasing financial profile, let alone its significant, almost dominant, social media presence, having a turnover during the 2024 financial year of more than $164 billion, an increase on the previous financial year of almost $135 billion of more than 20 per cent. It just grows!
Can you believe that Facebook, originating in 2004, has just turned 21 years old, from its genesis at Harvard University, where five students, Zuckerberg, Saverin, McCollum, Moskovitz and Hughes pooled their meagre savings to launch an application for Harvard students, on the platform then named ‘FaceMash', to rate each other’s looks, stay connected and share experiences. Within a year, most other American universities were connected and inter-connected, and PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel provided the investment to go global, while Sean Parker, its first CEO and President, provided the business acumen.
Today, Facebook has made Zuckerberg one of the most recognisable names in the world and has made him obscenely wealthy, circa $144 billion. Eduardo Savarin, now a venture capitalist, is worth $22 billion. The coding expert behind the operation, Dustin Moskowitz, has $15 billion. The man responsible for the prototype construction, Andrew McCollum, is by no means poor, but probably feels short-changed with private wealth of only $20 million, while the last of the five, author and publisher Chris Hughes, has emerged with $500 million. Its primary investor, Thiel, has been successful elsewhere and is valued at $23 billion, while Parker has a Forbes valuation of $3 billion.
Meta Platforms, its parent company entity since 2021, is developing its current success through the advertising power of its stable of Applications, including its flagship, Facebook itself, Instagram, Messenger and WhatsApp, giving it an incredibly powerful ‘voice’ across social media, networking and commerce, with its Marketplace App, alone, a significant developer in the second-hand, or used product market, and critically, as a further marketing and selling platform for the giant Temu brand, from China, to the lively consumer demand for cheaply produced goods, to the bigger-spending Western consumer.
You and I are among more than 3 billion active Facebook users worldwide, who make it the third most-visited site in the world, behind only Google and YouTube. It’s just so easy to do, via personal computers, laptops, tablets and phones we can register in minutes, and within hours create an ever-widening circle of like-minded, social groups, friends and family, limited only by your personal privacy requirements, which can be chosen by users.
Psychiatrists point to concerns over the level of narcissistic activity across the platform, with fears that users are over-exposing themselves and becoming vulnerable to more aggressive users. As a result, there is also a growing awareness of the level of neuroticism, with anxieties and self-doubt emerging as the consequences of failed online interactions. So, from an individual perspective, concerns regarding the intrusiveness of Facebook and its sociological consequences are probably real, not imagined, and worthy of that investigation.
It is worth pointing out that to date, Google Scholar has identified nearly 30,000 research papers with concerns over possible adverse consequences, and let’s face it, very little today is.
Privacy issues, such as the Cambridge Analytica data scandal, political influence, such as the 2016 US election, the ‘fake news’ thing, copyright issues, and hate speech, have all reared their ugly heads within the Facebook platform. However, my concern is more around ‘scam’ traders and fraudsters who use the platforms to ‘sell’ goods then don’t provide them, often using payment details for other, distinctly malevolent, transactions. Usually, the banks will refund these fraudulent transactions, but that’s not the point. Facebook must do more, earlier, to stop this predatory presence, and there must be consequences for continued and repeat offenders. Otherwise, Zuckerberg et al will just continue to fill their pockets, at our inconvenience, which is totally neither acceptable nor respectful of those of us who are not millionaires.
Facebook.com is already iconic, a game-changer, a mover and shaker of such significant degree that it has changed the way we see the world, and how the world sees us. It owes it to its billions of followers the protection and security it can undoubtedly provide... if it has the will to do so.
Ray Petersen
The writer is a media consultant
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