Facebook (FB) was founded in 2004, and more than twenty years later it is time to take stock. More than three billion active users seem to provide evidence of its undisputed global ‘success’. It is a tool that has changed the lives of many people, but is not easy to say whether this has been for better or for worse. In the meanwhile, it seems that we can no longer do without FB or any of Zuckerberg’s other tools, such as Instagram or WhatsApp. Every now and then, the media talks about the psychological and cognitive damage caused by social media, especially among young people. Sometimes they also talk about the misuse of our data, but these are phenomena that are not very visible and difficult to quantify. Despite dozens of books, investigations, academic research, and even films denouncing the abuses of FB (and the whirlwind career of its founder) could fill up entire libraries and websites, most people seem largely uninterested in its harms.

In an attempt to raise users’ awareness, we started to review the political, economic, social, cognitive, ethical, and privacy costs of this addiction. We selected around fifty of the best-known and verifiable categories of event documented in the media between 2007 and 2025, and these are listed here. These range from the illegal use of user data to its deliberate manipulation for commercial and political purposes, from the exploitation of workers in the global south (click farms) to collaboration with authoritarian governments, from million-dollar fines to silencing the voices of Palestinians in Gaza. All events and allegations are known to an audience of experts and insiders but seeing it all together gives us an idea of the temporal dimensions and the extent of those misdeeds. Our work is a preliminary and non-exhaustive “catalogue of horrors” that will form part of a data base project starting in Spring 2026 in the Digital Humanities laboratory at the Department of Humanities of the University of Roma Tre. If you think that we have missed some important Zuckerberg-related abuses or misdeeds, please do contact the authors at domenico.fiormonte@uniroma3.it .

Among the questions I would like to ask in the workshop, there is one that I know will be particularly unpopular with students: isn’t it time to abandon Zuckerberg and the GAFAM empire (which is also an inherent part of the genocide economy)? Abandoning these platforms is part of a necessary and urgent process of epistemic decolonization. The first step in this direction is to counter the narrative that “there are no alternatives”, when in fact there are now more and more, such as those listed by llaborda.org. Software that is free or at least not programmed to extract data and personal lives from individuals has always been available, but its adoption requires, in Gramscian terms, a new consciousness followed by an adequate literacy.

We must develop awareness and mastery of a system of signs in which languages and media, programs and devices, software and hardware constitute the frameworks of thought and knowledge. The second step is to rediscover (and defend) the web as a protocol and open space for cultural diversity, uncensored communication and sharing, in contrast to the cages of commercial platforms and corresponding apps as standardized models of thought and global surveillance. In short, it is up to us to become active and aware digital literates, rejecting a digital world that has been disfigured by Big Tech deception, misrepresentation, and exploitation. The battle for freedom of expression, for the right to the exclusive use of our digital corpus, and for the creative and conscious use of the internet is still ongoing. However, given the increasingly widespread weaponization of digital spaces—as demonstrated by the EU Council substantial approval of Chat Control—we cannot completely rule out the possibility of a gradual DigitalExit. Perhaps, in the not-so-distant future, disconnecting from the internet will be the only way to save it.

Authors: Domenico Fiormonte and Kassandra Wilhelm

4 December 2024