The social network celebrates its 15th anniversary on February 4, 2019. Quite a party! In a three-part documentary series, we dive into the mother of all social networks. How did the medium emerge 15 years ago? What is Facebook's global impact on our well-being, privacy and democracy? What are Facebook's future plans?
What a man by the name of Mark Zuckerberg started as an innocent digital yearbook 15 years ago quickly grew to become one of the largest, most powerful, but also most controversial companies in the world. It is the most successful product ever conceived. A brilliant marketing machine with roughly 2.3 billion users. And yet, there are questions. Many questions. About the ever-growing influence Facebook has on our lives. Mark Zuckerberg said:
“Facebook was not originally created to be a company. It was built to accomplish a social mission - to make the world more open and connected.”
Technology would make the world a better place. That was the promise. But has Facebook actually made the world a better place? Has Facebook brought us closer to one another? And what is the price we pay for that?
In this series, we travel around the world to talk to academics, authors, journalists, engineers, programmers, (ex-)Facebook employees and entrepreneurs. At the same time, we conduct our own research and tests, to try to get a handle on the hyper-complex, elusive network that Facebook has become.
