On May 14, 1984, a real boy was born. Nineteen years later that real boy was a student at Harvard University, and as a totally normal real boy he decided to create a website to post photos of his classmates side by side so people could vote which one was hotter. In one blog post, the real boy who no one wanted to have sex with said some of the photos were “pretty horrendous,” and that they deserved not to be compared to other students, but to pictures of farm animals. Years later, the real boy helped subvert American democracy.
--On This Day in History Shit Went Down: May 14, 1984--
When you wish upon a star, you can fuck your classmates over and (allegedly) steal an idea that makes you a mega-billionaire. “FaceMash” was the aforementioned “hot or not” site launched by Mark Zuckerberg in October of 2003, and it didn’t last because the university quickly shut that shit down and Zuck was almost kicked out of school, charged with violating copyright and individual privacy.
The charges were dropped, but in the short time FaceMash was online it was popular. Lt. Commander Zuckerbot then launched “TheFacebook” three months later, co-opting a name already in use by various universities for student listings that have accompanying photos. Yes, the original URL contained “the.” And that fucker got shut down by the school real fast too, not because it was exploitative, but because it was overloading the school network.
Six days after launch, three Harvard seniors accused Zuck of stealing their idea, and later sued. They allege Mark agreed to help them build HarvardConnection.com but instead created Facebook using their concept. Facebook eventually settled for several million dollars seven years later.
The site was originally just for Harvard students, and then opened to other Ivy League schools, then by 2006 anyone 13 or over with an email address could sign up. As of 2022, it is the third most popular website in the world (after Google and YouTube), and three billion people—almost 40% of the goddamn planet—log in to the fucker each month. And now the real boy who no one wanted to fuck is worth $70 billion. Hypocrisy alert! Most of my income comes via my Facebook page, but I’m just selling books, not people’s personal data to help Trump get elected.
Yeah, that happened. Prior to the 2016 election a company called Cambridge Analytica secretly harvested the data of 87 million Facebook users and then provided analytical assistance to both the Trump and Ted Cruz campaigns. A former Cambridge Analytica employee blew the whistle in 2018 and Zuckerberg had to testify before Congress. Facebook apologized for the misuse of its data and was fined $5 billion by the Federal Trade Commission.
Facebook has become a platform for spreading disinformation (often coming out of Russia) and hate speech, polarizing society worldwide. That’s how the company makes its money, with an algorithm that rewards sowing discord and generating outrage. Zuckerberg doesn’t care how engagement grows, so long as it grows, and damn the consequences.
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