I Meta’s Facebook Turns 18

Social media giant Facebook—now a subsidiary of Meta—is under threat on multiple fronts as it turns 18. Here’s a look at its biggest acquisitions and scandals over the last 10 years. 2012 In May 2012, eight years after Facebook was launched by Harvard sophomore Mark Zuckerberg and his college roommates, the company went public at $38 per share with an initial public offering that valued the social media firm at $104 billion. It also began changing its business model so the platform could support the rise of smartphones. A month before Facebook went public, the company bought photo-sharing app Instagram for $1 billion in a combination of cash and company shares, bringing its biggest potential competitor under its control.

2014 Meta bought the ad-free mobile messaging application WhatsApp, founded by two former Yahoo! executives Jan Koum and Brian Acton, in February 2014 for $19 billion. It also bought virtual reality (VR) technology firm Oculus VR for $2 billion, which was best known for its VR headset Oculus Rift product, designed for video gaming. Meta’s acquisition of Oculus VR—now known as Meta Quest—gave it an instant presence in the VR market at a time when developers were starting to show interest in the technology.

2015 Facebook-owned Oculus then bought British VR startup Surreal Vision, which specializes in real-time 3D scene mapping, allowing users to interact with real-world objects from within VR.

2016 In 2016, things started to unravel. In terms of profits, Facebook made big jumps in 2016, raking in almost $10.2 billion, up from $3.7 billion in 2015, an increase of 177%. However, as the year unfurled, Facebook had to deal with a wave of misinformation being spread on its platform as the Clinton vs Trump presidential election was fought. Fake news designed to influence the result of the vote garnered hundreds of thousands of hits on Facebook. 2018 In February, Facebook was threatened by a Belgian court with a fine of up to $125 million if it continued to break privacy laws by tracking people on third-party websites. As Europe’s GDPR legislation came into effect, Facebook introduced a set of privacy principles explaining to users how they can take more control of their data. In March, it was revealed that data analytics company Cambridge Analytica had stolen data from millions of Facebook accounts and used it to influence the 2016 presidential campaign. It was alleged that Facebook had become aware of this in 2015 but did nothing to protect user privacy. In April 2018, Zuckerberg appeared before the US Congress to answer questions about the scandal.

2019 Facebook introduced stricter privacy settings on its platforms. For businesses, the company launched advertising solutions for AR and Facebook stories. Facebook also paid a $5 billion fine to the FTC to resolve allegations that it violated its 2012 consent order.

2020 Another US election and more misinformation went viral on Facebook, despite the measures taken to prevent it. As a result, Zuckerberg authorized changes to the news feed algorithm, which determines what users see.

2021 In September, Zuckerberg revealed that the company would be investing $50 million into developing the digital “metaverse.” But in October, whistleblower Frances Haugen, former Facebook product manager, stole headlines by alleging that company executives including Zuckerberg had misled investors, that the platform had allowed hate and misinformation to go unchecked, that it had data showing that Instagram harms the mental health of teenagers and did not act on it, and that it put profits before users. Amid the controversy, Zuckerberg announced in the later part of October that the company had changed its name to Meta and shifted its focus to the metaverse, a virtual reality version of the internet. Facebook became one of Meta’s subsidiaries, alongside Instagram and WhatsApp, among others. In Q4 2021, the company generated profits of $10.28 billion—8% less than the $11.2 billion generated in the same period in 2020. Nonetheless, Facebook posted a 35% climb in profits for 2021 at $39.4 billion.