Zuckerberg promises to bring back the greatness of Facebook, but we don’t believe him. We recall why the social network is disliked around the world

Meta (until 2021, Facebook) is one of the most influential companies of the 21st century, which started as a closed student social network, but with its growth came problems: accusations of interference in politics, selling personal data, and manipulating algorithms, which gradually undermined user trust.

Advertising overload and an outdated format have made Facebook «a social network for», while young people are increasingly choosing Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat, and BeReal with their dynamic and visual content. This forced Zuckerberg to reconsider his development strategy, and in early 2025, he announced about large-scale changes, promising to restore Facebook to its former greatness and make it «culturally influential» for 3 billion users.

But is it possible after all the scandals and controversial decisions? Will Facebook really revive or is it just an attempt to hold on to its position? Let’s find out.

Stolen photos, or Zuckerberg’s first Facemash project

In October 2003, Mark Zuckerberg, then a 19-year-old Harvard student, created Facemash, a website that allowed users to rate students’ appearance using photos from the university’s databases. It was an analog of the Hot or Not service, where users submitted their photos for others to rate on a scale from 1 to 10, and the average score was considered the photo’s grade. This site also offered a dating mechanism called Meet Me and an advanced profile feature called «Hot Listings». But instead of asking for permission, it pulled the students’ photos from university databases without their consent.

Facemash quickly gained popularity — 450 people visited the site in 4 hours, and the number of views reached 22 thousand. However, the university’s reaction was immediate: the service was shut down, and Zuckerberg was accused of violating privacy and unauthorized access to data. The Harvard Crimson student magazine in detail covered this story, and Zuckerberg himself was disciplined.Despite this high-profile failure, it was Facemash that sparked the creation of Facebook. It’s ironic that a social network that began as a privacy scandal has become one of the world’s biggest privacy violators.

The birth of (The) Facebook and the ouster of co-founder Eduardo Saverin

The social network, which was later named Facebook, was founded on February 4, 2004 by Zuckerberg together with Eduardo Saverin, Dustin Moskovitz, Andrew McCollum (graphic designer) and Chris Hughes (PR). Within 24 hours of launching TheFacebook.com, 1200 students (almost half of Harvard) had registered on it. It was hosted by a server under a dormitory bed. Could the young student have imagined then that in 20 years he would be accused of interfering in elections and his name would become synonymous with «lost privacy»?

The main idea behind Facebook was to create a closed community for Harvard students where they could communicate and share information. Everything was simple and straightforward: no advertising, no tracking. Just profiles with academic groups, statuses like «John is desperate for a philosophy exam», and a button «Not yet» to decline friend requests.

How to write According to The Business Insider, in late 2003, Zuckerberg, a sophomore, asked Saverin, an undergraduate, to deposit $15,000 into a joint bank account. The money, Mark promised, would be used for the servers needed to host TheFacebook.com. Eduardo, a young man from a wealthy family with a talent for investing, agreed.

Things were looking up, so Mark, Eduardo, and Dustin (in charge of the technical part) registered The Facebook as a limited liability company (LLC) under Florida law.

The project quickly became popular, and Facebook began to reach out to other universities, and later opened up to global users.

Six months after Facebook’s launch, in the summer of 2004, Zuckerberg and Moskovitz moved to Palo Alto, California, where they planned to work on the project in a rented house. There they met Sean Parker, an Internet startup who soon joined Facebook. And Saverin went to New York for an internship at Lehman Brothers. Before that, Mark asked him to work on three things: «create a company, get funding, and develop a business model».

After that, the relationship between the co-founders began to deteriorate. Eduardo Saverin independently launched an ad on Facebook that was about his own startup, a job search site called Joboozle. This infuriated Zuckerberg. Later, the more popular Facebook became, the more their relationship deteriorated. Saverin was of little help.

On January 7, 2005, Mark forced Facebook to issue 9 million common shares of the new company. He took 3.3 million shares for himself, and gave 2 million to Sean Parker and 2 million to Dustin Moskovitz. This reduced Eduardo’s stake in the company from 24% to less than 10%.

Court battles with the Winklevoss twins

Later, Saverin felt cheated by Zuckerberg, so he won a huge amount of money through lawsuits. This is how his small investment of $15,000 in Eduardo turned into more than $5 billion without any further effort on his part.

A special mention should be made of Zuckerberg’s long-running legal battle with the Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss brothers, which ended only in 2008. The twins accused him of stealing their idea for the ConnectU social network to create Facebook. The brothers were ordered to pay $65 million in cash and shares.

In 2002, twins Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, along with their classmate Divya Narendra, began developing HarvardConnection (later renamed ConnectU), a social network for Harvard students. They needed a skilled programmer to build the platform, and in 2003 they approached Zuckerberg, who already had experience in website development. Zuckerberg agreed to help and was given access to the project’s documentation and source code. He even assured the Winklevosses several times that he was actively working on the site. However, a few months later, he stopped communicating and launched his project — The FacebookIn 2008, Facebook overtook MySpace to become one of the most popular social media platforms with 200 million monthly active users.

In 2010, ConnectU filed a new lawsuit, accusing Facebook of securities fraud for allegedly mispricing its stock in a previous case. The Winklevoss brothers initially planned to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, but later decided against it. One of ConnectU’s attorneys accidentally disclosed the settlement amount, which led to a new legal malpractice suit. Wayne Chang, the founder of i2hub (a competitive campus service), filed a lawsuit against the Winklevoss brothers, demanding 50% of the payment, as he claimed that he was also a co-founder of the project.

What happened next? Facebook has become one of the largest tech giants with a 3 billion audience, but this story has become a symbol of the company’s controversial business ethics.

The Winklevoss brothers used the proceeds to invest in cryptocurrencies, became one of the first bitcoin billionaires, and founded the Gemini exchange.

In 2010, the story of this conflict was filmed in the movie«Social network»starring Armie Hammer as the Winklevoss brothers.

How did Facebook start losing credibility?

The social network has repeatedly been at the center of scandals that have gradually undermined user confidence. Here are some of the most high-profile ones:

«We will destroy you!»: threats to the creator of Snapchat for refusing to sell to Facebook

Mark Zuckerberg’s attempt to take over Snapchat in 2013 ended in a resounding failure. Meta (then Facebook) offered Snapchat co-founder and CEO Evan Spiegel $3 billion for the service, but he refused without hesitation. But that’s not all.According to Spiegel, back in 2012, Zuckerberg personally met with him and openly threatened him: if Snapchat did not agree to cooperate, Facebook would simply copy all its features and crush the young company.

Facebook promptly released Poke app — its Snapchat clone, but it quickly disappeared from the market. However, Zuckerberg did not give up on the idea of destroying his competitor. Since he was unable to buy out Snapchat, he began to copy the best ideas of Spiegel’s app. Thus, in 2016, Instagram (and later Facebook) appeared Stories is the key feature that made Snapchat popular.

Spiegel has repeatedly sneered over Facebook’s attempts to steal its developments. But so far, Zuckerberg hasn’t been able to move Snapchat.

Running a VPN to spy on users

More information means more money. Facebook continued to look for ways to collect even more data, especially about users of applications it did not own.The platform launched Project Ghostbusters, which used a cyberattack method called SSL man-in-the-middle. This is a technique where an attacker generates fake certificates for HTTPS domains, deceiving the victim. It believes that it has a secure connection to the site, while in fact it transmits data through a fake server. In this way, Facebook intercepted and decrypted Snapchat’s secure analytics traffic, and later YouTube and Amazon as well.

These facts became known after the publication of court documents last year. It is noted that Project Ghostbusters was launched by «at the request of» Zuckerberg. The documents were first published Jason Kint, CEO of Digital Content Next. The project was implemented through the VPN application Onavo (later Facebook Research), which Facebook acquired in 2013 and closed only in 2019.

Facebook paid users, including teenagers (18% of the audience), to install the Facebook Research VPN app, which tracked their online activity. The previous version of this app, Onavo, was removed from the App Store for violating Apple’s privacy policy. During the congressional hearings, Mark Zuckerberg evaded direct answers to questions about this program, and later had to clarify his words. Apple said that Facebook violated the rules by using a corporate certificate to distribute the app to users, which led to a temporary blocking of Facebook in Apple’s internal services. About this story in detail TechCrunch wrote.Despite Zuckerberg’s claims, it is clear that Facebook used programs to collect user data even after the revelations. The scandal with Onavo and Facebook Research showed how far the company is willing to go to obtain analytical data.

Data leak of millions of users: the Cambridge Analytica case

In 2018 flared up is one of the biggest scandals in Facebook’s history. It became known that the consulting company Cambridge Analytica illegally obtained personal data of tens of millions of users without their consent.The information was collected through.

This Is Your Digital Life quiz application created by scientist Alexander Kogan. Although only about 300,000 people used it, its algorithm allowed access to the data of their friends on Facebook, which significantly expanded the database. This information was used to create detailed psychological profiles of voters, which were used in political campaigns, including the 2016 US presidential election and the Brexit referendum.The investigation also showedthat Facebook provided priority access to data to certain companies, including Netflix, Badoo, Lyft, and Airbnb. Despite the uproar, Zuckerberg’s company continued to insistsaid it has never sold data to third parties.Due to the scale of the scandal, Mark Zuckerberg was summoned to a hearing in the US Congress. During interrogation.

He avoided direct answers, repeated prepared phrases about «user safety» and even admitted that he knew almost nothing about how Facebook works. Memes of his clumsy answers and unnatural behavior quickly flooded the web, which only fueled criticism.This story not only seriously damaged Facebook’s reputation, but also raised questions about the ethics of using personal data in the digital age.

Facebook’s algorithms: how «information bubbles» affect the worldview and content on the war in Ukraine

As you know, Facebook uses algorithms that tailor content to the interests of users. This creates so-called «information bubbles». On the one hand, it’s good to see only the content that is really interesting among the proposed content. But on the other hand, this leads to the fact that users come across mainly those publications that correspond to their worldview, without alternative views. This contributes to the polarization of society and the spread of fake news. Research by the human rights organization Avaas showedreported that in April 2020 alone, fake news about COVID-19 received 460 million views. This suggests that social media algorithms can amplify disinformation, especially during crises. On the other hand, Zuckerberg saidreported that officials from the Biden administration pressured Facebook to censor certain information during the COVID-19 pandemic.Facebook has also been repeatedly accused of selectively moderating content, especially political content. The Center to Combat Digital Hate (CCDH) in its study discovered.

At the beginning of the full-scale invasion, 91% of Russian propaganda posts about Ukraine did not have any warning labels from Facebook. At the same time, Ukrainian activists complained about the removal of posts exposing Russian aggression, while pro-Russian propaganda often remained untouched.

And although on February 26, 2022, Meta temporarily allowed publications calling for the death of Putin and Lukashenko, on March 14, she canceled this decision and announced that it had changed its content moderation policy to «remove any ambiguity in its position».«As a result of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, we have temporarily allowed forms of political expression that would normally violate our rules, such as aggressive language such as «death to Russian occupiers». We will not, as before, allow persuasive calls for violence against Russian civilians»,” said a Meta spokesperson.

Total commercialization and oversaturation of advertising (2020)

In 2020, the company launched Facebook Shops, which allowed businesses to create free online stores on Facebook and Instagram. This simplified the process of selling goods directly through social networks. As a result, Facebook has become more attractive as a commercial platform than as a social network. Business accounts, advertising campaigns, and marketing tools have become the main sources of revenue. Although the commercialization of Facebook has brought significant profits, it has also raised questions about the balance between business interests and meeting the needs of users. Trust in the social network was undermined by the previous revelations about data trafficking. In response, the company has begun to introduce new algorithms to combat fake news and disinformation to improve the quality of content.

These numerous changes have significantly impacted the way content is distributed on Facebook, leading to a significant decrease in organic page reach, meaning that posts from businesses, media, and other organizations are less visible to users without additional paid advertising from commercial profiles. As a result, many page administrators were forced to invest in advertising to maintain a high level of engagement with their audience. Facebook recognized these changes, but noted that the decrease in organic reach is due to the growth of content and changes in user behavior.

From a leftist fighter for truth to a sudden friendship with Trump

Just a few years ago, Mark Zuckerberg was an outspoken supporter of left-wing political forces in the United States. His company actively supported the Democrats, and he invested hundreds of millions of dollars in projects that contributed to Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 election. In particular, through the organization Center for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL), the company financed expanding access to voting in key states that traditionally swung between Republicans and Democrats. These funds were used to organize electoral processes in local districts.After the attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, Facebook suspended Trump’s accounts, citing violations of the platform’s policies. These actions led to even greater tensions: Trump criticized social media for alleged bias against conservatives and Facebook’s interference in the election. And he filed a lawsuit against Meta, accusing it of illegally suspending accounts.

But after the 2024 elections, the situation changed dramatically. Zuckerberg, who had previously fought against «disinformation» and funded Democratic initiatives, suddenly became close to Donald Trump. Earlier this year, Meta, the parent company of Facebook, announced the termination of its fact-checking program, replacing it with a community-driven model similar to Elon Musk’s X (formerly Twitter) platform. This comes after Zuckerberg’s noticed Trump is visiting his Mar-a-Lago estate.

At the same time, the case of blocking Trump’s accounts was resolved: Meta agreed to a $25 million settlement, of which $22 million was allocated to the Trump presidential library. In addition, the company donated 1 million to Trump’s inaugural fund, which further demonstrated the significant warming of relations between the company and the Republican. Zuckerberg himself attended the inauguration of the 47th president.

Interestingly, some Facebook and Instagram users were surprised to see noticedThe company explained that they were following the accounts of President Donald Trump or Vice President J.D. Vance. Meta explained that this happened because users had previously followed official US government accounts, the names of which changed with the new administration. Meta explained that the followers of the old accounts are automatically transferred to the new ones. Therefore, users will have to unsubscribe manually.

The company has also recently appointed Republican Joel Kaplan as Meta’s global policy officer. Kaplan has been actively opposing restrictions on political speech in the company. In addition, UFC CEO and President Dana White, a Trump ally, will join Meta’s board of directors.

Imposing intimate AI chatbot ads on Facebook users

Last spring, Facebook, Instagram, and Messenger were bombarded with thousands of ads for AI chatbots that offered very explicit communication. They also collected a lot of user data, according to the report Wired. Meta’s advertising library contained at least 29 thousand ads promoting AI-«friends». Meta said it reviews ads and removes those that violate its policies. And «also continues to improve its systems, including those that help identify ads and behavior that contradict»’s rules

.Meta rules prohibit ads that contain shocking, excessively violent, adult content and profanity.

But the problem that arose on Meta platforms is not new to tech companies. In January, OpenAI faced a similar situation when AI chatbots flooded its new GPT store: Korean Girlfriend, Virtual Sweetheart, Your AI Girlfriend.

Apple and Google had similar problems. The companies removed from their stores ads for apps that used AI to create fake erotic photos, including those of celebrities and minors.

Meta’s success: what else keeps the company afloat?

Despite the significant criticism and scandals surrounding the sale of user data, it is worth noting the positive aspects of ex-Facebook, and there are many of them.

Facebook has united more than 3 billion people around the world

The word «connection» was used very often by Zuckerberg and in official Facebook statements after the company went public in 2012:

• 2012: «In 2012, we connected more than a billion people and became a mobile company».
• 2013: «We look forward to the next decade to help connect the rest of the world».
• 2014: «…we are making progress on the way to uniting the world».
• 2015: «We continue to invest in better serving our community, building our business and connecting the world».

In addition to internal development, the company is actively working to expand the social media ecosystem. In 2012, Facebook acquired Instagram for about $1 billion. This allowed the company to attract a younger audience and strengthen its position in the field of visual content. Two years later, in 2014, the company bought WhatsApp for $19 billion. This step strengthened Facebook’s position in the messenger segment, which was key to diversifying its services and maintaining competitive advantages.

In the summer of 2023, Meta successfully launched Threads is a text messaging platform that has become a competitor to the former Twitter, which has clearly not gotten any better under Elon Musk’s management. Threads offers a simple and user-friendly interface, tight integration with Instagram, and the ability to conduct public discussions without the chaos and massive amount of negativity seen on other platforms. Unlike X (ex-Twitter), where algorithms and moderation are controversial, Threads tries to be a more open and friendly network for users (which the latter have appreciated).

As of January 2025, activity on Threads achieved 275 million monthly active users. For comparison, this is the number of people who used Twitter in November 2019 (in 2024, this figure was 500 million).

Facebook Shops — a revolution in e-commerce

In 2020, the world saw Facebook Shops is a free service for creating online stores on Facebook and Instagram. This feature gave small and medium-sized businesses the opportunity to sell goods directly through social networks, which greatly simplified the e-commerce process. Entrepreneurs have access to flexible store settings, product catalogs, and built-in customer support features. Facebook Shops has also integrated with popular payment systems and logistics services, making it an effective tool for businesses.

Facebook and Instagram are still among the most effective platforms for advertising. Thanks to advanced targeting algorithms, advertisers can reach the exact audience they need. Built-in analytical tools allow you to evaluate the effectiveness of advertising campaigns, optimize budgets, and increase conversions.

Investing in advanced technologies and developing interesting products

Meta is not afraid to take risks: from the metaverse to neural interfaces, the company has invested billions in ambitious projects. Not all of them became profitable or known to the general public, but they definitely attracted attention.

In 2021, Mark Zuckerberg announced the renaming of Facebook to Meta, emphasizing the priority of the metaverse — a digital world where people could collaborate, communicate, and have fun without leaving home: through virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR). For this purpose, the company created the Reality Labs division, which has received more than $36 billion in investments since 2019.

During its existence, the division has managed to release Meta Quest 2 — the most popular VR helmet in the world (more than 20 million units sold as of 2023). And since its launch in Q4 2023, 900 thousand to 1.5 million Meta Quest 3 devices have been sold. Horizon Worlds — a platform for social interactions in virtual space through avatars was also launched. Although Reality Labs records billions of dollars in losses every year due to the low popularity of the metaverse, technical limitations of AR devices, and competition from Apple, Meta continues to work in this direction and delights technogeeks. Although can close Horizon Worlds in 2025.

Like many other companies, Meta is betting heavily on artificial intelligence (AI). It is «brain» all services and algorithms. The company uses it to improve social networks, create a metaverse, and analyze data. In 2025, Meta plans to invest In addition, Meta is integrating AI tools into its platforms such as Facebook and Instagram. For example, it will introduce accounts and content generated by artificial intelligence to make its services more interactive and attractive to users.

Other interesting projects include Terragraph — technology for high-speed Wi-Fi in cities via millimeter waves; Aria AR glasses;  Aquila — a solar-powered drone.

Such ambitious projects always require long-term and large investments, and the results are often unpredictable. For example, Terragraph is only effective in line-of-sight, which limits its use. And Aquila’s development was discontinued in 2018 due to lack of profitability.

Meta has repeatedly experimented with decentralized technologies: the cryptocurrency project Diem (Libra) was closed in 2022 due to regulatory pressure (although it is thanks to this pressure that a blockchain programming language called Move was developed, which is used by the developers of the Aptos blockchain network). The function of using NFT on Instagram deleted a year later due to scant demand. Unfortunately, after the FTX crash, investors and users began to avoid crypto projects. In addition, Meta failed to convince regulators that its solutions were safe.

Independent external Supervisory Board

In 2018, Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta (then Facebook) initiated creation of the Oversight Board to increase transparency and responsibility in decision-making on content moderation on the company’s platforms. Meta pledged to comply with all decisions of the Board, except for those that contradict the law. In 2020, it began its operations. Through the Council, users can appeal decisions to remove content or its availability on Facebook and Instagram. The Council has the authority to make binding decisions on individual cases and provide recommendations on company policies. Meta created an irrevocable trust fund with an initial funding of $130 million, and in 2022, it allocated an additional $150 million for the Council’s operations and to guarantee its independence from the company.

It was the Supervisory Board that once decided to suspend Donald Trump’s account after the events of January 6, 2021, and recommended that Meta establish clear and proportionate sanctions for such cases in the future. Interestingly, there are only a couple of cases regarding the war in Ukraine on the official website (1,2), including decisions to allow publications that called for violence against the Russian military. One case concerned the removal of a post criticizing Russian aggression, where the Council ruled that it should be reinstated as it did not violate the hate speech policy. The other case involved a decision to temporarily relax the rules on statements in the context of war, which provoked a mixed reaction from the public and digital rights experts.

Despite Meta’s efforts to portray the Council as independent, it confronts with criticism. Some experts note that its decisions do not always have a real impact on the company’s policy. For example, Meta does not always implement the Council’s recommendations for long-term changes in moderation, particularly in cases that may affect the company’s business interests. In addition, there is a perception that the Board only considers a limited number of cases and does not have time to cover all important cases, which raises concerns about its effectiveness.

At the same time, unlike Meta, other tech giants such as Google or Twitter (X) do not have similar independent decision-making structures for content moderation. Google has internal committees that determine content policy, but they do not involve external experts in decision-making. Twitter, after the change of ownership by Elon Musk, introduced its content review system, but its transparency and effectiveness are highly questionable.

Facebook: conquered the world, lost its credibility, and is now trying to resurrect itself

Facebook started as a modest student project by Mark Zuckerberg and a few of his classmates (although the Winklevoss brothers would argue otherwise). Over time, the social network for college students has united more than 3 billion people and grown into a giant, but burdened with all sorts of dark stories.More than 20 years ago, a young coder with a sheep’s head claimed to be creating a platform for communication without boundaries. His idea set the world on fire, making Facebook not just a network, but a global social networking infrastructure with 3 billion members. However, at each stage of expansion, the company sacrificed its previous ideals for the sake of power over information, which brought in huge amounts of money. Privacy violations, data sales, interference in elections, and influence on public opinion have made Facebook a tool for manipulation on a global scale.

In 2016, the social network’s algorithms became so powerful that they began to set the political agenda in the United States and other countries. At first, Facebook quietly and then openly became a participant in the political game: it sponsored democratic initiatives, supported campaigns against disinformation (which, however, mostly targeted conservatives), and even blocked the 45th American president at the time. Mark Zuckerberg, who a few years ago funded organizations that helped Biden’s voters, stood by Trump, abolished fact-checking, and changed the moderation policy. Change of ideology or banal pragmatism?

At the same time, Facebook has long stopped setting trends and has been chasing its competitors in an attempt to catch up. The world has changed, and the social network that once opened up new horizons is now rather trying to survive in a reality where younger and more flexible players are taking its place. Its users are getting older, and trust continues to decline. The company is forced to reorient itself, looking for new allies among those who were banned yesterday for «dangerous statements». But will it bring back Facebook’s greatness?