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Writing a book about Facebook feels like writing a book about the internet. Too much to cover, too many developments, too many twists and turns, too much that is already history by tomorrow. Consider this book an incomplete and unfolding travel guide – a book that cannot be filed under any conventional category found in the travel book section. As a topological mapping of sorts, this book will necessarily provide a partial picture of Facebook. That is OK, even to be expected of a book of this nature. Just like the internet itself, the fact that Facebook is difficult to grasp doesn’t mean there isn’t a concrete origin, prevailing myths, dominant discourses, social histories, cultural contexts, politics, technical developments and imaginary futures. It’s all there and part of what makes Facebook Facebook.

In Chapter 1, I look at the framing of Facebook, both by the company itself, as well the discourses that surround it, especially as it pertains to Facebook’s early days. This chapter gives readers a sense of where Facebook came from, providing more grounds to the origin story started in this chapter. By analysing Mark Zuckerberg’s public statements, this chapter considers the discursive and rhetorical framing of Facebook and the prevailing metaphors used to define what Facebook is and should be. By situating an analysis of metaphors in the cultures and histories of the internet more broadly, this chapter shows how Facebook is very much built on techno-libertarian ideologies of communalism and hacking that have helped to spur Facebook’s culture of moving fast and breaking things.

Chapter 2 explores Facebook as an infrastructure. Using two analytical figures – electric light and chairs – this chapter grapples with Facebook’s scale and relational qualities by way of an infrastructural reading. Using Zuckerberg’s own analogy between Facebook and the electric light as a starting point, I draw on science and technology studies and histories of electrical light to account for Facebook as a large technical system. Using the Like button and Open Graph as cases in point, this chapter makes the argument that even the most technical features contain a rich texture of economic principles, political forces and social concerns. Moreover, analysing one of Facebook’s most grandiose television ads, which compares chairs to Facebook, the metaphor of the chair is used to question what and whom Facebook is for.

Chapter 3 considers Facebook sociality by situating questions of identity and friendships in a discussion of Facebook’s real name policy. Beginning from Facebook’s (early) identity as a social network site, this chapter looks at how networks became social and first had to be deanonymised. By way of a discussion of authenticity, the bulk of the chapter is concerned with the ways in which friendships have been strategically mobilized in the creation of Facebook’s business model. Ultimately this chapter shows how a foundational element of what makes Facebook, Facebook, is that it is ‘grounded in reality’.

In Chapter 4, I cover some historical and evolutionary grounds again. This chapter is dedicated to the mapping of Facebook’s techno-economic development in terms of its most significant business decisions and technical features. If Chapter 1 provided an account of Facebook’s history in terms of its discursive and metaphorical work, and Chapter 2 scaled up the discussion to the level of large technical systems and infrastructure, this chapter is concerned with the specific business decisions Facebook has made along the way and how those strategies have been implemented in specific features. The main objective of this chapter is to provide readers with a discussion of Facebook’s two main features, the News Feed and its algorithms. By examining how these features are modelled on notions of journalism and news, this chapter reveals the importance of not just understanding what the features are or do, but how they are made to signify to begin with.

Chapter 5 examines Facebook as an advertising company. In this chapter, I argue that Facebook must be considered as a capitalist machine constituting and constituted by an ad-tech-surveillance complex. It provides readers with an overview of digital advertising and how the Web became a commercial space through the implementation of tracking technologies such as cookies, and how Facebook has built on these logics to create an enormous digital tracking and advertising infrastructure. Knowing more about the specifics of Facebook as an advertising company also serves to ground some of the discussions in the next chapter, as knowing what the economic rationales are and how they are technically implemented helps to ground the higher level ethical questions surrounding democracy and politics.

Chapter 6 addresses the complicated and convoluted terrain of politics. While focusing on the intersections of Facebook and electoral politics and campaigning, the chapter makes a case for understanding Facebook politics in the widest possible way. Facebook politics is just as much about electoral politics, as it is also about protests, activism, regulation, technical artifacts, institutional structures, laws and the values in design. By combining a discussion of Facebook’s role in the growing landscape of digital behavioural advertising, with cases studies of the Cambridge Analytica scandal and the atrocities in Myanmar, this chapter investigates how Facebook’s design and business model help to shape a polluted information landscape. It ultimately shows how the politics of Facebook is concerned with its world-making power, of that which is allowed to take root, to evolve, and to take shape because of Facebook’s central position.

In the concluding chapter, I synthesize the book’s case studies by considering the different ways in which the assertion that Facebook is Facebook can be understood and why it matters. The argument is made that Facebook became new only recently, when existing words, categories and concepts ceased to be able to describe and explain it adequately. Furthermore, this chapter makes the case that Facebook has become a hyperobject of sorts, a thing too distributed in time and space, for us to get our heads around it. This unclarity, however, invites renewed attention and reflection, not just about what Facebook is but what we would like it to be.