The Instagram age has given rise to a new class — the “influencers”, who persuade their followers to buy and think in certain ways. But the biggest influencer of the lot is Facebook — the company that owns Instagram, WhatsApp as well as Facebook itself. With 2.7bn users — more than a third of the world’s population — Facebook is a massive, global political force, accused of everything from tipping the 2016 US presidential election to enabling genocide in Myanmar.
Facebook’s founder Mark Zuckerberg was once reluctant to acknowledge the company’s political power — initially rejecting the idea that fake news on Facebook influenced the 2016 election as “crazy”. This attitude may have been naive or disingenuous, but it was certainly not sustainable. Facebook has become a political target — and so it has had to enter the political arena, trying to mollify legislators who fear its power.
At 35 years old, Mr Zuckerberg has proved himself to be a brilliant engineer and businessman. But now he will have to prove himself a brilliant politician. If he fails, his creation could be broken up — or find that its ambitions are increasingly thwarted and its best products regulated out of existence.