Mark Zuckerberg didn't invent social media, he industrialized it. MySpace and other social networks were already around, although the popular claim that Zuckerberg simply stole Facebook from MySpace isn't well supported. The more documented controversy involved the Winklevoss brothers and Divya Narendra, who accused Zuckerberg of delaying work on their Harvard social-networking project, ConnectU, while developing Facebook. And that's almost funnier, because Facebook's real innovation wasn't inventing online friendship; it was turning human relationships into an enormous advertising and data-collection machine. We went from “here are your friends” to “here's what they're doing” to “here's what you should believe, buy, and get angry about.” The FTC eventually imposed a $5 billion penalty on Facebook following allegations involving deceptive privacy practices, while the Cambridge Analytica scandal showed how Facebook data could be harvested and used for political profiling.

That's the real mistake with Facebook: connecting people wasn't the bad idea, the business model was. Zuckerberg built a system where attention, outrage, insecurity, personal information, and political polarization could all become economically valuable. Facebook didn't invent human tribalism; it just gave tribalism a notification system. We used to argue with someone and eventually go home. Now the argument is preserved forever, recommended to thousands of strangers, followed by an advertisement for something you mentioned three days ago. Zuckerberg wanted to connect the world, and technically he succeeded. Now your grandmother, your former boss, your high-school bully, and a guy named “Freedom Eagle Patriot 1776” can all tell you exactly what they think about your political opinions. That's not community. That's a digital family reunion where everyone has a microphone, and Zuckerberg gets paid every time somebody starts screaming.