The Social Network was about Mark Zuckerberg and how he got his start with Facebook.  Mark and his girlfriend Erica break up and Zuckerberg goes back to his dorm at Harvard and starts to come up with the algorithm for “Facemash” which used the photos of students who belonged to different houses on the Harvard campus.  Using pictures from the Kirkland House and the formula for the algorithm, he created Facemash and within 2 hours he had 22,000 hits which ended up crashing Harvard’s Network.  He was accused of intentionally breaching security and ended up getting 6 months of academic probation.  Over the next couple of weeks, he worked on the algorithm and spent time building the code for what eventually would be called, “The Facebook.”  He wanted it to have exclusivity and he wanted it to be a way for college students to meet each other. 

In the movie, a friend inspired him to create the relationship status.  He ran into some issues when he was asked to work on Harvard Connection by the Winklevoss brothers in which he agreed and then kept blowing them off to work on his project.  He continued to ignore their requests to meet and eventually they take him to court for possible stealing their idea for Harvard Connection and using it for The Facebook.  The Winklevoss brothers tried to get Mark in trouble for being in violation of Harvard law, stealing from another student but it backfires.  Eventually, they lawyer up and take Zuckerberg to Court and he settles and pays them.  Zuckerberg ends up meeting up with Sean Parker who had already been seeing the results and financial gains of Napster. Mark is influenced by Sean and moves out to California to grow Facebook and advance the company, but he is facing a strained relationship with his best and only friend, Eduardo who helped him start the company.

 Eduardo initially invested $1,000 to start the company and has been investing and providing money to the company to get it up and running.  When Eduardo sees that Mark has been heavily influenced by Sean who Eduardo thinks is bad news he freezes the bank account and assets.  Mark then finds an investor, Peter Theil who makes an investment of $500,000.  Eduardo was in NYC trying to secure ad deals for the company which Mark and Sean didn’t see as a good direction.  He and Mark saw something bigger for The Facebook, which eventually upon Sean’s suggestion become just “Facebook.”  When Eduardo returned from NYC the last time, he found that his shares of the business were diluted down to .03 percent and Eduardo was outraged.  Zuckerberg ended up eventually settling with Eduardo and the Winklevoss brothers.  Facebook had just broke one million members.  Facebook is valued at 25 billion dollars, making Zuckerberg the youngest billionaire in the world.

In the TED Talk, The Filter Bubble, Eli Pariser talks about Facebook’s News Feed and how it only shows us information that we click on.  He said that Zuckerberg said when asked about it, “a squirrel dying may be more interesting to some than people dying.”  There has been a shift in how information is flowing online.  Facebook looks at which links I am clicking on without consulting me and editing out information, Pariser said.  It has an invisible algorithm and so does Google.  The News Feed gives us personalized news and different people get different news.  The internet shows us what it thinks we want to see – not what we need to see.

“It will be very hard for people to watch or consume something that has not in some sense been tailored for them.”                      

-Eric Schmidt, Google

Your Filter Bubble is your own personal unique information that you live in online.  What’s in your filter bubble depends on who you are and what you do, but you don’t decide what gets in and more importantly, you don’t actually see what gets edited out.  The News Feed and Google do not provide a balanced information diet.  We need to be able to see that are also uncomfortable, challenging, important, and other points of view.  We need to gain control so we can decide for ourselves.  As Pariser says, “the internet will not connect us if it leaves us isolated in a web of one.”

Question:   In the movie, Zuckerberg squeezes Eduardo out due to differences concerning the direction of Facebook.  Do you think that Zuckerberg was wrong to do that to his best friend?  OR Did you feel he  was justified and it was necessary in order for the business to grow?

Works Cited:

The Social Network (NETFLIX)

The Filter Bubble, TED Talks https://www.ted.com/talks/eli_pariser_beware_online_filter_bubbles