“Are you more of Facebook, or MySpace?” The question was asked to the readers of L’Express in an editorial from… 2007. We read that Facebook, trombinoscope in good French, “will one day develop an enormous turnover thanks to targeted advertising”. Prophetic! Meta is today a tech empire whose flagship applications (Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp) are used by three billion people.
The newborn Facebook, which was born on February 4, 2004 at Harvard, has grown up well. The 2010s were those of doubt, of scandals, of the world’s awakening to the potential toxicity of the platform. We remember the countless mea culpa of its creator, Mark Zuckerberg, in front of the American Congress or the European Parliament, swearing that it would never happen again. We know the rest.
Today, the soon-to-be forty-year-old imagines a destiny other than that of a man who will simply “connect” people to each other thanks to social networks. Its philanthropic activities are booming. “He still has a very long life and career ahead of him. I imagine he will do great things with his money, which, in his eyes at least, will redeem him,” said Sheera Frenkel, journalist at New York Timesand author of a best seller in 2021 on Facebook, L’hashorrible truth (The Ugly Truth). His analysis, as well as that of Fabrice Epelboin, teacher and social media specialist, can be found in our long video format, available on our YouTube and TikTok channel.