Communications Major

The reckoning has come.

Likes and shares made the social media site what it is. Now, company documents show, it’s struggling to deal with their effects.

As it continues to be the gatekeeper for more than 2 billion active users’ data, one has to wonder: What if we, and not Facebook, were the ones in the digital driving seat? What if we bought out social media platforms from the Zuckerbergs of the world and owned them ourselves, or simply demanded to know how our data is being used? What if we even owned and could sell our data for personal profit, treating it as an income stream, instead of handing it to tech firms?

Facebook is now home to one billion digital denizens. This quote by founder Mark Zuckerberg really captures the spirit of Facebook’s mission, “We live at a moment when the majority of people in the world have access to the internet or mobile phones — the raw tools necessary to start sharing what they’re thinking, feeling and doing with whomever they want..” Think about it.

Threads, from Meta, looks and feels like Twitter -- without the hate (so far).

Internal documents suggest Facebook has long known its algorithms and recommendation systems push some users to extremes.