Facebook has turned 20.

The social media company that began life in 2004 as a “hot or not” website from 19-year-old Harvard student Mark Zuckerberg, eventually growing into a $1 trillion behemoth, would now be old enough to legally, in Australia at least, drink and smoke if it were a person.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing last month to discuss child safety online. Credit: AP

Some say Facebook is the new tobacco: an addictive substance that doles out regular dopamine hits – in Facebook’s case in the form of “likes” and comments – with severe negative health consequences, particularly for young people.

It’s arguably worse and, like smoking, we likely won’t know the true impact for decades.

The story of Facebook’s first 20 years is one of initial promise and optimism being replaced over its evolution by rampant privacy intrusions, misinformation and an overall malaise that has long dogged the company, though not its share price.

Facebook’s decline – setting aside its eye-watering valuation – is symptomatic of the ruination of everything we once loved about the internet.

It has fallen victim to “enshittification”, a term coined by the writer and futurist Cory Doctorow to describe the decay of online platforms. As Doctorow put it: first, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die.

Nearly every online service you can think of – Twitter, Reddit, Google search and Bandcamp – are now shadows of their former selves thanks to enshittification, and Facebook is arguably the poster child.

Facebook was once a far more friendly, fun and innocent place to spend time online. It was a simpler platform, and it was good to its users. Its feed was filled with inane status updates (everyone must know what I just had for dinner), tedious photos of said dinner, and general life updates including new jobs and successful marriage proposals.