TOBY SHAPSHAK: Facebook’s unhappy 15th birthday
The social media giant is an obnoxious teenager that is oblivious to its self-centred destructiveness
Turning 15 is a drag — ask any teenager. Imagine then that you’re Facebook. Last week, as the largest social media network reached this milestone, it seemed every bit the gangly kid trying to look cool while beset by angst and self-doubt. All while being hated by the rest of the class. Just a few years ago, Facebook was self-confident. It grew from its early years of "move fast and break things" into an established global figure, the internet’s intranet, as it were. Then the 2016 US presidential elections happened, like an outbreak of acne that turned into a life-threatening disease, as the Cambridge Analytica scandal turned into a full-blown crisis of confidence in 2018. Mark Zuckerberg’s post (on Facebook, obviously) to commemorate this anniversary is as tone-deaf as all of his other self-congratulatory postings. "As networks of people replace traditional hierarchies and reshape many institutions in our society … there is a tendency of some people to lament this change, to overly ...
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