It's complicated
Facebook's terrible 2018
The year is coming to a close, and it’s time to reflect on what a year it was.
Luckily, Facebook can wrap up all your memories – from awkward photos to events you never planned to attend – with an algorithmically generated bow. Its “Year in Review” videos, every one personalized for each of the social network’s 2.2 billion users, are an annual tradition. Think of it as a thank-you gift for all that personal data you handed over.
But what can one say about Facebook’s own year in review?
From genocide in Myanmar to lynchings in India and a fake news tsunami in Brazil, this was the year that the global cost of “move fast and break things” came into focus. Throw in Cambridge Analytica, an exodus of executives, restive regulators, stagnating growth and a falling stock price and you have a portrait of a company in continual crisis. Oh, and don’t forget about the trip to Congress, waffling over Alex Jones, the odd defense of Holocaust denialism, a starring role in an indictment of Russians, and more.
Here’s a timeline of Facebook’s terrible 2018.
Every year, Mark Zuckerberg chooses a "personal challenge", from learning Mandarin to reading a lot of books to visiting all 50 states. In 2018, though, the personal is professional, and Zuck announces that he intends to "focus on fixing" Facebook's serious problems. "Facebook has a lot of work to do – whether it’s protecting our community from abuse and hate, defending against interference by nation states, or making sure that time spent on Facebook is time well spent," he writes.
Facebook doesn't waste any time trying to get things back on track, with an overhaul of the News Feed algorithm that was designed to prioritize "meaningful social interactions" over sensational content and fake news.
The billionaire philanthropist George Soros has an unpleasant message for Facebook and Google in a speech at the World Economic Forum at Davos: "It took Facebook eight and a half years to reach a billion users and half that time to reach the second billion. At this rate, Facebook will run out of people to convert in less than 3 years ... The internet monopolies have neither the will nor the inclination to protect society against the consequences of their actions. That turns them into a menace."
The target of a new indictment in the special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation is a Russian "troll farm" called the Internet Research Agency. But Facebook and Instagram play a starring role in the document detailing how 13 Russians used social media platforms to spread misinformation and discord, with 41 mentions in just 37 pages.
The Sri Lankan government blocks access to Facebook and other social media sources after anti-Muslim riots turn deadly. Facebook says it is concerned that the government is restricting access to information, but government officials blame Facebook for failing to halt the spread of hate speech and incitement to violence.
UN investigators condemn Facebook for playing a major role in fomenting a possible genocide against the Rohingya minority in Myanmar. "I’m afraid that Facebook has now turned into a beast, and not what it originally intended,” the UN Myanmar investigator Yanghee Lee says.
The Guardian's sister paper, the Observer, breaks the story of how the personal Facebook data of 50m people was improperly obtained by a political consultancy that went on to work for Donald Trump. “We exploited Facebook to harvest millions of people’s profiles," the whistleblower Christopher Wylie tells the Guardian. "And built models to exploit what we knew about them and target their inner demons. That was the basis the entire company was built on.”
For five days, Mark Zuckerberg stays silent on Cambridge Analytica, even as Facebook's stock crashes, lawmakers call for investigations, and a movement to #DeleteFacebook takes off. Among those deleting Facebook accounts are Elon Musk, who gets rid of Tesla's company page, and the WhatsApp co-founder Brian Acton, who sold his messaging company to Facebook for $22bn.
Zuckerberg finally breaks his silence on the data and privacy scandal engulfing his company. Zuck's new message is all about taking responsibility. "We have a responsibility to protect your data, and if we can’t then we don’t deserve to serve you,” he says.
In one of his many apology interviews in the wake of Cambridge Analytica, Zuckerberg takes credit for Facebook's "systems" cracking down on hate speech and incitement in Myanmar. Civil society groups in Myanmar respond that it wasn't Facebook's systems, but their own work, that caught the threats – and that it took Facebook over four days to act.
Zuckerberg spends two days being grilled by members of Congress. He explains how Facebook makes money ("Senator, we run ads"), promises to take a "broader view" of Facebook's responsibility, and dodges dozens of questions. Reviews are mixed, but Facebook's stock price ticks up.
The WhatsApp co-founder and Facebook board member Jan Koum announces his departure. While Koum says that he wants to focus on hobbies such as "collecting rare air-cooled Porsches", most observers believe the split is due to conflicts between the privacy-minded WhatsApp team and data-hungry Facebook.
The EU's General Data Protection Regulation, sweeping new rules to protect people's privacy, goes into effect. Complaints are immediately filed against Facebook and Google over their data practices.
Indian authorities struggle to cope with a rash of murders linked to rumors and misinformation spreading virally on Facebook's messaging app, WhatsApp. Thirty murders are linked to WhatsApp rumors of "child-lifters", including eight over the course of a few days in June and July.
In an interview with Recode, Zuckerberg takes a surprising stance, defending the rights of Facebook users to post Holocaust denialism because he doesn't "think that they're intentionally getting it wrong". After an outcry, he says: "I personally find Holocaust denial deeply offensive, and I absolutely didn’t intend to defend the intent of people who deny that."
Facebook's stock price plummets after the company's quarterly results reveal sluggish growth. “We are investing so much in security that it will have a significant impact on our profitability,” Zuckerberg says. “We are starting to see that this quarter.”
Facebook claims that it's cracking down on misinformation and hate speech but defends Alex Jones and InfoWars, saying that kicking them off the platform "would be contrary to the basic principles of free speech". But after Apple decides to give InfoWars the boot, Facebook follows suit.
Facebook uncovers another attempt to influence American elections, this time by Russia and Iran.
The co-founders of Instagram, Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger, announce their departures from Facebook. The pair say that they want to explore their "curiousity and creativity" again, but most observers suspect an aversion to meddling by Zuckerberg.
Facebook announces that mearly 50m Facebook accounts were compromised by an attack that gave hackers the the ability to take over users’ accounts.
Facebook's vice-president of global policy, Joel Kaplan, raises eyebrows when he attends the then supreme court nominee Brett Kavanaugh's Senate hearing about allegations of sexual assault in a show of support for a close personal friend. The appearance by Facebook's top man in Washington DC, personal or not, does not go over well with female Facebook employees.
Brazil's contentious presidential election is marred by out-of-control fake news and misinformation spreading on WhatsApp and Facebook.
A blockbuster report reveals that Facebook hired a a PR firm that attempted to discredit the company’s critics by claiming they were agents of the billionaire George Soros, a classic antisemitic trope. Zuckerberg and Sandberg initially deny knowledge of the campaign, but Sandberg later acknowledges further involvement, leading to increased criticism of the chief operating officer.
Secret documents that are part of a legal battle between Facebook and an app developer are obtained by Damian Collins, the chair of the digital, culture, media and sport select commmittee of the House of Commons, despite a US judge's court order.
Zuckerberg, who refuses to appear, is represented by an empty chair as representatives of nine countries criticize Facebook and question another executive.
Collins publishes 250 pages of the secret Facebook documents. Internal emails show how Facebook and Zuckerberg considered selling user data, played hardball with competitors, and prioritized Facebook's dominance over users' privacy.
Facebook fesses up to another privacy bug, this time involving exposing the photographs of up to 6.8m people. The bug effects photos that users uploaded but never posted – revealing to users that Facebook was saving photographs that they had chosen not to share.
The Senate intelligence committee releases two expert analyses of the Internet Research Agency's online propaganda campaigns, revealing new details on how social media was used to target African Americans.
An investigation by the New York Times reveals new details on Facebook's various data sharing deals with major tech companies. One disturbing finding: the company gave Netflix and Spotify the ability to read, write and even delete users' private messages.
The attorney general for Washington DC files a lawsuit against Facebook for allowing Cambridge Analytica to obtain people's personal data. The lawsuit, the first of its kind, sends Facebook's stock tumbling again.
