The 15th anniversary of the birth of social networking Facebook. 15 years ago, Zuckerberg co-founded Facebook, and in the past 15 years, Facebook has changed from a small website in Harvard University's dorm to an Internet giant with 2.7 billion users worldwide.
These 15 years are not smooth.
Zuckerberg became a controversial figure, especially in the past few years. Zuckerberg and his technology industry are caught in one after another violation of personal privacy scandals (such as "Cambridge analysis scandals"), hacking, information security risks and so on.
Zuckerberg and Facebook’s management were attacked by public opinion because of the hidden political interventions on the Facebook platform. For example, people accuse the Facebook platform of being used by Russian institutions, interfering with US elections, and even becoming a promoter of ethnic cleansing activities in other countries.
In an article published on Monday to commemorate the company's 15th anniversary, Zuckerberg wrote: "These are important issues, and we have a responsibility to be more proactive in managing our social networks to prevent harm to users."
Zuckerberg also pointed out that Facebook now spends more on information security each year than the company's total revenue in 2012 - $5.1 billion.
In this letter, Zuckerberg also revealed an optimistic atmosphere. He said that although some users are not satisfied with the changes brought by social networks such as Facebook to the whole society, in general, social networks have a positive impact.
Zuckerberg wrote in the letter: "Before the birth of the Internet, if you and the neighbors of the community have different opinions or interests, it is difficult to find a community that has your hobbies at the same time, if you know a neighbor. Moved away, you have lost contact. If you want to attract attention to a social issue, you can only pass the media or politicians, who have the power to distribute your message. If you want to make your business more customers You need to buy expensive ads or paste information on the bulletin board. Now you can contact everyone with your own voice."
The following is the full text of Zuckerberg's 15th anniversary of the birth of Facebook.
Today, fifteen years ago, I published a virgin version of the Facebook site in my college dormitory. At that time, I found that there are already many websites on the market that allow people to search for various things, such as books, music, news, information, and businesses, but no website can search for the most important information: people.
So I developed a simple website around people and friendships where users can connect with the people they want to know and share everything important in life.
The desire of people to express themselves, learn from others, and stay in touch through new ways is beyond my initial imagination. In a few weeks, two-thirds of Harvard students use Facebook almost every day.
A few months later, students from other places emailed me and my roommates, hoping to launch Facebook in their school, and then we launched Facebook in about 30 schools.
Over a year, more than one million students are already using Facebook to stay in touch. In the years that followed, we began to make this service reach more people. It took about four years for the site to reach 100 million users and less than a decade for billions of users. Today, 2.7 billion people around the world stay in touch through our services.
The first decade in which people used Facebook to build a network of people was an unforgettable time. Some outsiders think that Facebook is just a short-lived new fashion, and even a little boring, but for us who started using this platform early, it is clear that a major change is taking place in society as a whole, reflecting how a world today The new reality of operation.
In the past, many people's lives were filled with huge levels of institutions, such as the government, the mass media, universities, and religious organizations. These organizations have brought stability to society, but they are sometimes out of reach. If you want to progress, you can climb up slowly along this "staircase." If you want to create something new or spread a new idea, it would be hard to get to the sky without the support of the above organizations.
In today's 21st century, the world is full of different networks, people are free to communicate with admirers, and people have the ability to share ideas and life experiences. Facebook is far from being the only social network that brings this change, it is just one component of the ambitious development of the Internet.
Before the birth of the Internet, if you have different opinions or interests from your neighbors in the community, it is difficult to find a community that has your hobbies at the same time. If you know that a neighbor has moved away, you have lost contact. If you want to raise concerns about a social issue, you can only go through the media or politicians who have the power to distribute your message. If you want to get more customers in your business, you need to buy expensive ads or paste information on the bulletin board. Now you can reach everyone with your own voice.
For me, the goal is that after Facebook released the News Feed feature, millions of people organized protests against violence in Colombia. We have seen some online communities unite and launch active fundraising on the Internet.
Now you can keep in touch with everyone with your own voice. You don't have to go through various levels of organization as you have in the past. People have greater abilities that not only create opportunities but also create new challenges and responsibilities.
If the first phase of the 21st century is to build a network of people on the Internet, then in the next phase, people will use these networks to redefine all aspects of our society. In a world that relies on social networking, this requires a balance between freedom and responsibility.
In the past few years, public opinion discussions about social networks have focused on the social or ethical issues they bring, such as content regulation to balance freedom of expression and social security, or how to determine the context in which people share massive amounts of information. The principle of protecting personal privacy, or improving health or personal well-being in a connected world, and ensuring the fairness of elections and democratic processes. All of these are key issues, and we have a responsibility to be more proactive in managing social networking platforms to prevent them from harming them.
On these issues, we have made substantial progress, we develop the world's top systems to solve these problems, but we still need to do more work.
We are taking some measures that were almost impossible a few years ago. For example, this year, our investment in information security has exceeded the total annual revenue of Facebook when it went public, and artificial intelligence technology for content management has only matured in recent years. .
In any case, as people use social networks to reshape society, it is critical that we continue to make progress on these social issues.
At the same time, we need to see other factors or strengths. As the Internet's interpersonal network replaces the traditional hierarchical structure and reshapes various organizations in society (such as government, companies, media, communities, etc.), we can see a trend that some people oppose social networking. Changes, over-emphasis on negative effects, in some extreme cases, some even claim that empowering people through the Internet and social networks will bring harm to society and democracy.
In fact, on the contrary, although rapid social change creates uncertainty, I see that people have greater abilities, and people are reshaping a society that is more open and accountable in the long run.
We are still in the early stages of this revolution, in many ways, even just getting started.
If in the past 15 years, people create new social networks and start to see the changes they bring, then in the next 15 years, people will use this new ability to transform society. The next few decades will have great positive significance.
When I founded Facebook, all of us had a deep desire to focus on “people,” not just content, business, business, applications, and politics. I still have the same beliefs until today, and I am grateful to everyone on Facebook's social network who also holds this belief and is building a new world every day. We will usher in another brilliant 15 years.
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