--- title: Facebook At 20: Unpacking The Real Tragedy Of Meta description: Facebook and its parent company Meta have truly harmed the world, writes David Kirkpatrick. canonical: https://time.com/6656392/facebook-20th-anniversary-mark-zuckerberg-meta-legacy/ author: David Kirkpatrick article:opinion: true article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2024-02-04T18:22:27.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-10-19T07:39:13.886Z article:section: Ideas og:title: Unpacking the Facebook Tragedy as It Turns 20 og:description: Facebook and its parent company Meta have truly harmed the world, writes David Kirkpatrick. og:url: https://time.com/6656392/facebook-20th-anniversary-mark-zuckerberg-meta-legacy/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt28750476e0e7cf61/698a458116d884f4efc3cd82/GettyImages-1975286261.jpg?branch=production&width=1024&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1024 og:image:height: 576 og:image:alt: Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook Turns 20 Years Old - Photo Illustration og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Unpacking the Facebook Tragedy as It Turns 20 twitter:description: Facebook and its parent company Meta have truly harmed the world, writes David Kirkpatrick. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt28750476e0e7cf61/698a458116d884f4efc3cd82/GettyImages-1975286261.jpg?branch=production&width=1024&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Unpacking the Facebook Tragedy as It Turns 20 > Sponsored content. 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A paid TIME subscription is separate and available at time.com/subscribe-agent. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-inside-2026q3/newsletters?i=7a473dc9-0568-415f-8a5a-38fa0c03fac0&cr=time-nl-inside-2026q3-v1) ## Video: As Tech CEOs Are Grilled Over Child Safety Online, AI Is Complicating the Issue [Watch (HLS stream): As Tech CEOs Are Grilled Over Child Safety Online, AI Is Complicating the Issue](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/i7owfiCa.m3u8) (7:10)  _Published 2024-01-31. The CEOs of Meta, TikTok, X and other social media companies are testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee about child exploitation on their platforms, as lawmakers, families and advocates are growing increasingly concerned about the effects of social media on young people’s lives. The hearing started with recorded testimonies from kids and parents who said they or their children were exploited on social media._ by [David Kirkpatrick](https://time.com/author/david-kirkpatrick/) ## David Kirkpatrick Feb 4, 2024 6:22 PM UTC The CEOs of Meta, TikTok, X and other social media companies are testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee about child exploitation on their platforms, as lawmakers, families and advocates are growing increasingly concerned about the effects of social media on young people’s lives. The hearing started with recorded testimonies from kids and parents who said they or their children were exploited on social media. by [David Kirkpatrick](https://time.com/author/david-kirkpatrick/) ## David Kirkpatrick Feb 4, 2024 6:22 PM UTC Which of two historic developments this past week ought most symbolize the importance of Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg as his company, Meta, today marks exactly 20 years of existence? Should it be the CEO’s humiliation on Wednesday [at the hands of American senators](https://time.com/6590470/csam-ai-tech-ceos/), who told him he “had blood on his hands” and prompted him to turn and contritely address the relatives of young people whose tragic deaths, those relatives believe, were the result of using his company’s products? Or should it be what happened Thursday, when [Meta announced vast corporate earnings](https://time.com/6618350/meta-stock-shares-first-dividend-facebook-mark-zuckerberg/) and its stock the next day soared, adding $197 billion to its overall valuation—more in one day than had any company, ever? The answer, of course, is both. The unprecedented journey of this society-altering corporate behemoth continues in ways that are almost as hard to comprehend and digest as the generative artificial intelligence technology it is racing to deploy. This company’s genuine financial and business success is, at the same time, a tragedy of world-historical proportions. **Read more:** [Here’s What We Know About Mark Zuckerberg’s Net Worth](https://time.com/6630332/mark-zuckerberg-net-worth-estimations-meta-stock/) That’s because Facebook and its parent company Meta have truly harmed the world. That it has also been uniquely profitable in the course of doing that is not a coincidence. The willful omission of sufficient guardrails makes everything on Meta’s services go faster, including profit. The company this week announced a $50 billion share buyback alongside huge quarterly earnings. It even launched a shareholder dividend, unusual for a still fast-growing company. Zuckerberg himself, by far the largest stockholder, is set to earn around $700 million a year from that dividend. I have had a unique perspective on this saga because I was the first journalist to seriously engage with the company’s story, starting in September 2006 when it had a mere 9 million users. (As of the end of 2023, Meta’s various services had a total of [3.98 billion users](https://investor.fb.com/investor-news/press-release-details/2024/Meta-Reports-Fourth-Quarter-and-Full-Year-2023-Results-Initiates-Quarterly-Dividend/default.aspx#:~:text=Family%20monthly%20active%20people%20%28MAP,%25%20year%2Dover%2Dyear.). The number it directly affects will surpass half the planet’s population in the very near future.) After meeting Zuckerberg for lunch back then in midtown Manhattan, I wrote an article for _Fortune_ entitled “[Why Facebook Matters](https://money.cnn.com/2006/10/06/magazines/fortune/fastforward%5Ffacebook.fortune/index.htm),” which impressed the then 22-year-old Zuckerberg and led, eventually, to a 2010 book chronicling the company’s already-remarkable story, _The Facebook Effect._ So I’ve watched carefully as Zuckerberg evolved from an ambitious and generally decent young man into someone I view as a cold-blooded and amoral schemer whose successes are the envy of his fellow capitalists. This 20-year chronicle is entirely about him. He is not just a talented visionary and business leader. Because he has had total control of his globe-spanning enterprise and has led it without sufficient concern for its effects on the world, his culpability for those effects is uniquely large. In the last day or so I’ve read several judicious and relatively neutral essays in the business press marking Facebook’s 20th anniversary. But they just didn’t capture the sheer oddity and awfulness of the company’s story. It’s critical people not underestimate the awful part. I was deeply struck by how the U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken analyzed what’s going wrong with the world in a conversation with Tom Friedman of The New York _Times_ a few weeks ago at the[ World Economic Forum in Davos](https://www.state.gov/secretary-antony-j-blinken-at-a-conversation-with-thomas-friedman/). “The biggest poison that we face around the world internally in our societies and externally in our relations with others,” Blinken said, “is dehumanization—the inability to see the humanity in the other.” He was talking about the tragedy of Israel and Gaza as well as Ukraine and even U.S.-China relations. But he could as easily have been talking about the dynamic in the cafeteria of any high school on the planet, or among the alumni of Zuckerberg’s alma mater Harvard, for that matter. In my opinion, Zuckerberg played a major part in worsening that shift towards hatred, intolerance, and the attempted cancellation of those we don’t agree with. It’s not that Zuckerberg wants the world to be fractured. It’s more that he didn’t realize it mattered until it was too late, more or less around the time Donald Trump was elected President of the United States. He won with the help, in part, of disingenuous [Facebook ads](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/nov/01/facebook-ads-russia-us-election-fake-news-released-public) paid in rubles from Russia and strategically targeted at voters in critical swing counties in Wisconsin and Michigan. By then, though, Zuckerberg was the richest person his age in history. It seems to me he became more concerned with maintaining that status than doing what would be necessary to reduce the polarizing and dehumanizing effects of his company’s systems. **Read more:** [_Mark Zuckerberg Is Reportedly Building an Underground Bunker in Hawaii_](https://time.com/6551188/mark-zuckerberg-underground-bunker-hawaii-report-reaction/) Of course, there are also innumerable good and even great social and political impacts of these systems. This is the most popular media in the world because people enjoy using these services. It’s just another complication when assessing the macro impact of this company. But we don’t prevent someone from going to jail for murder just because they volunteer at a homeless shelter. I spend a lot of time asking myself why Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp have contributed so horribly to the rise of autocrats and to [the epidemic of teen suicide and self-harm](https://socialmediavictims.org/mental-health/suicide/), just to mention two especially tragic effects. In part, it's because this company seemingly built its systems from the beginning with far more concern about their ability to generate clicks and attention than about governance mechanisms that might mitigate their harmful impacts. For example, in 2008, the [company introduced systems](https://developers.facebook.com/blog/post/2009/09/29/introducing-translations-for-facebook-connect/) to enable its users in countries around the world to themselves translate Facebook’s English into their local languages, which people everywhere promptly did. Yet Facebook had no employees who spoke most of those languages or who were assigned to ensure their speakers were not harming each other. That remains the case, to this day, in many languages. In Myanmar, an official U.N. inquiry concluded that [Facebook disinformation and harassment](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/15/technology/myanmar-facebook-genocide.html) contributed to genocide. The harms also continue because, despite the umbrage of the senators and their peers in numerous other countries, governments and regulators have notoriously failed to sufficiently assess and restrain this company and other social media giants. The European Union is beginning to establish laws that can be models for other jurisdictions, but it’s too little too late. But there’s another way to understand why Facebook and so many other social media companies have such a pernicious socio-cultural effect. It’s because these systems were not designed with a sufficient appreciation for the toxic impact of human ego and emotion. Fifteen or 20 years ago, I wrote a regular email column for _Fortune_. I occasionally tackled unpopular topics, like outsourcing American manufacturing, which I suggested might not always be so bad. In reply, I got some scathingly critical emails from readers, calling me terrible names. Sometimes I would email them back, saying I was sorry they felt that way and adding a bit of further explanation. Often, probably more often than not, I would then receive a far less hyperbolic note from the reader, thanking me for my note. But such an exchange is far less likely on social media. That’s because much of the interaction happens in public. And in public, people have a reputation to maintain. When you speak in front of an audience, as one does on Facebook or Instagram, you want to impress your friends and those you hope are your admirers. We play to our audience. Concessions and efforts to find concord are not what we expect. And as Blinken notes, we too often demonize the other, and polarization worsens. So happy birthday, Meta. Not. Your shareholders may be celebrating, but the rest of us should not be naive. Much of your impact on our world is not happy. ## Transcript Discord has been used to groom abduct and abused children met his Instagram help connect and promote a network of pedophiles. Snapchat's disappearing messages have been co-opted by criminals who financially extort young victims. Tik-Tok has become a quote platform of choice for predators to access engage and grandchildren for abused and the prevalence of cesium ion X has grown as the company has guided his trust and safety work for us today. We'll hear from the CEOs of those companies. They are not only the tech companies has contributed this crisis. They are responsible for many of the dangers are children face online. Their design choices their failures to adequately invest in trust and safety their constant pursuit of Engagement and profit over basic safety of all put our kids and grandkids and risk. I hope we can have a substance of discussion today that drives improvements across the industry including legislation that delivers would parents say they want a clear system for age verification and control over what apps their kids are using. Three out of four parents want App Store age verification and 4251 parental approval of Whatever Whenever teams download apps we support this. Parents should have the final say on what apps are appropriate for their children and shouldn't have to upload their ID every time that's what app stores are for. We also support setting industry standards on age appropriate content in limiting signals for advertising to teens to age and location and not Behavior at the end of the day. We want everyone who uses our services to have safe and positive experiences parents. So you didn't take any action. You didn't take any action. You didn't fire anybody. You haven't compensated single pic of let me ask you this today. Have you apologized to the victim? Would you like to do so now? They're here you're on National Television. Would you like now to apologize to the victims who have been hard, but you're probably showing the pictures. Would you like to apologize for what you've done to these good people. I'm sorry for everything that you have gone through terrible. No one should have to go through the things that your family is has have suffered and this is why we invest so much and are going to continue doing industry-leading a 2 to make sure that no one has to go through the types of things that your families have had to suffer. Mr. Zuckerberg you and the company's before us. I know you don't mean it to be so but you have blood on your hands. You have a product. You have a product. Does killing people? When we had cigarettes killing people we did something about it. Maybe not enough you going to talk about guns. We have the ATF nothing here. There's not a damn thing. Anybody can do about it. You can't be sued. We want America to lead in this solution. X commence the senate for passing the report act and we support the shield act. It is time for a federal standard to criminalize the sharing of non-consensual intimate material. We need to raise the standards across the entire internet ecosystem, especially for those tech companies that are not here today and not stepping up. X supports to stop see Sam Act the kids online safety act should continue to progress and we will support the continuation to engage with it and ensure the protections of the freedom of speech. There are two additional areas that require everyone's attention. first as the daughter of a police officer law enforcement must have the critical resources to bring these bad offenders to Justice. second with artificial intelligence offenders tactics will continue to sophisticate and involve industry collaboration is imperative here. X believes that the freedom of speech and platform safety can and must coexist we agree that now is the time to act with urgency to protect teens are a critical part of a larger trust and safety work as we continue all voluntary and unprecedented efforts to build a safe and secure environment for us users and sharing platform remains free from outside manipulation and implementing safeguards content recommendation and moderation tools. 17 safe online requires a collaborative effort as well as collective action. We shared concern and commitment to protect young people online. We welcome the opportunity to work with you or legislation to achieve this goal. Our commitment is ongoing and unwavering because there is no Finish Line when it comes to protecting teens, even with our strict privacy settings content moderation efforts proactive detection and law enforcement collaboration bad things can still happen when people use online services. That's why we believe that people under the age of 13 or not ready to communicate on Snapchat. We strongly encourage parents to use the device level panel controls on iPhone and Android we use them in our own household and my wife's wife approves every app that are 13 year old downloads We recognize that improving Online safety requires all of us to work together. So we partner with nonprofits law enforcement and our check colleagues to stay ahead of the curve in protecting young people online. We want to be the platform that empowers our users to have better online experiences to build true connections genuine friendships and to have fun. Senators, I sincerely hope today is the beginning of an ongoing dialogue that resulted real improvements in Online safety allowing fake check to grow into the most profitable industry in the history of capitalism without fear of liability for unsafe practices that has to change over the past year. This committee has unanimously reported five bills, that would finally hold tech companies accountable for child sexual exploitation on their platforms. Unanimous take a look at the opposition in membership of the Senate Judiciary Committee and imagine if you will do anything we could agree on unanimously let this hearing be called action that we need to get kids online safety legislation to the President's Day. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"OpinionNewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/6656392/facebook-20th-anniversary-mark-zuckerberg-meta-legacy/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/6656392/facebook-20th-anniversary-mark-zuckerberg-meta-legacy/"},"headline":"Unpacking the Facebook Tragedy as It Turns 20","datePublished":"2024-02-04T18:22:27.000Z","dateModified":"2026-10-19T07:39:13.886Z","description":"Facebook and its parent company Meta have truly harmed the world, writes David Kirkpatrick.","url":"https://time.com/6656392/facebook-20th-anniversary-mark-zuckerberg-meta-legacy/","keywords":["facebook","News Desk"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt28750476e0e7cf61/698a458116d884f4efc3cd82/GettyImages-1975286261.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"David Kirkpatrick","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/david-kirkpatrick/"}],"articleSection":"Ideas","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt28750476e0e7cf61/698a458116d884f4efc3cd82/GettyImages-1975286261.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook Turns 20 Years Old - Photo Illustration","caption":"Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook Turns 20 Years Old - Photo Illustration","creditText":"Jonathan Raa—Getty Images","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/ideas/","name":"Ideas"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/facebook/","name":"facebook"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/6656392/facebook-20th-anniversary-mark-zuckerberg-meta-legacy/","name":"Unpacking the Facebook Tragedy as It Turns 20"}}]},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"VideoObject","name":"As Tech CEOs Are Grilled Over Child Safety Online, AI Is Complicating the Issue","description":"The CEOs of Meta, TikTok, X and other social media companies are testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee about child exploitation on their platforms, as lawmakers, families and advocates are growing increasingly concerned about the effects of social media on young people’s lives. 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