2020–present: FTC lawsuit, corporate re-branding, shut down of facial recognition technology, ease

of policy
See also: 2021 Facebook leak and Frances Haugen
Facebook was sued by the Federal Trade Commission as well as a coalition of several states for
illegal monopolization and antitrust. The FTC and states sought the courts to force Facebook to sell
its subsidiaries WhatsApp and Instagram.[181][182] The suits were dismissed by a federal judge on
June 28, 2021, who stated that there was not enough evidence brought in the suit to determine
Facebook to be a monopoly at this point, though allowed the FTC to amend its case to include
additional evidence.[183] In its amended filings in August 2021, the FTC asserted that Facebook
had been a monopoly in the area of personal social networks since 2011, distinguishing Facebook's
activities from social media services like TikTok that broadcast content without necessarily limiting
that message to intended recipients.[184]

In response to the proposed bill in the Australian Parliament for a News Media Bargaining Code, on
February 17, 2021, Facebook blocked Australian users from sharing or viewing news content on its
platform, as well as pages of some government, community, union, charity, political, and emergency
services.[185] The Australian government strongly criticised the move, saying it demonstrated the
"immense market power of these digital social giants".[186]

On February 22, Facebook said it reached an agreement with the Australian government that would
see news returning to Australian users in the coming days. As part of this agreement, Facebook and
Google can avoid the News Media Bargaining Code adopted on February 25 if they "reach a
commercial bargain with a news business outside the Code".[187][188][189]

Facebook has been accused of removing and shadow banning content that spoke either in favor of
protesting Indian farmers or against Narendra Modi's government.[190][191][192] India-based
employees of Facebook are at risk of arrest.[193]

On February 27, 2021, Facebook announced Facebook BARS app for rappers.[194]

On June 29, 2021, Facebook announced Bulletin, a platform for independent writers.[195][196]
Unlike competitors such as Substack, Facebook would not take a cut of subscription fees of writers
using that platform upon its launch, like Malcolm Gladwell and Mitch Albom. According to The
Washington Post technology writer Will Oremus, the move was criticized by those who viewed it as
an tactic intended by Facebook to force those competitors out of business.[197]

In October 2021, owner Facebook, Inc. changed its company name to Meta Platforms, Inc., or
simply "Meta", as it shifts its focus to building the "metaverse". This change does not affect the
name of the Facebook social networking service itself, instead being similar to the creation of
Alphabet as Google's parent company in 2015.[198]

In November 2021, Facebook stated it would stop targeting ads based on data related to health,
race, ethnicity, political beliefs, religion and sexual orientation. The change will occur in January
and will affect all apps owned by Meta Platforms.[199]

In February 2022, Facebook's daily active users dropped for the first time in its 18-year history.
According to Facebook's parent company Meta Networks, DAUs dropped to 1.929 billion in the
three months ending in December, down from 1.930 billion the previous quarter. Furthermore, the
company warned that revenue growth would slow due to competition from TikTok and YouTube, as
well as advertisers cutting back on spending.[200]
On March 10, 2022, Facebook announced that it will temporarily ease rules to allow violent speech
against 'Russian invaders'.[201] Russia then banned all Meta services, including Instagram.[202]

October 4, 2021, global service outage

Main article: 2021 Facebook outage
On October 4, 2021, Facebook had its worst outage since 2008. The outage was global in scope,
and took down all Facebook properties, including Instagram and WhatsApp, from approximately
15:39 UTC to 22:05 UTC, and affected roughly three billion users.[203][204][205] Security experts
identified the problem as a BGP withdrawal of all of the IP routes to their Domain Name (DNS)
servers which were all self-hosted at the time.[206][207] The outage also affected all internal
communications systems used by Facebook employees, which disrupted restoration efforts.[207]

Shutdown of facial recognition

On November 2, 2021, Facebook announced it would shut down its facial recognition technology
and delete the data on over a billion users.[208] Meta later announced plans to implement the
technology as well as other biometric systems in its future products, such as the metaverse.[209]

The shutdown of the technology will reportedly also stop Facebook's automated alt text system,
used to transcribe media on the platform for visually impaired users.[209]

Website
Further information: List of Facebook features and Facebook Platform

Profile shown on Thefacebook in 2005

Previous Facebook logo in use from August 23, 2005, until July 1, 2015
Technical aspects
Ambox current red Asia Australia.svg
This section's factual accuracy may be compromised due to out-of-date information. The reason
given is: Facebook no longer uses HipHop for PHP. Please help update this article to reflect recent
events or newly available information. (August 2020)
The website's primary color is blue as Zuckerberg is red–green colorblind, a realization that
occurred after a test undertaken around 2007.[210][211] Facebook is built in PHP, compiled with
HipHop for PHP, a "source code transformer" built by Facebook engineers that turns PHP into C++.
[212] The deployment of HipHop reportedly reduced average CPU consumption on Facebook
servers by 50%.[213]

2012 architecture
Facebook is developed as one monolithic application. According to an interview in 2012 with
Facebook build engineer Chuck Rossi, Facebook compiles into a 1.5 GB binary blob which is then
distributed to the servers using a custom BitTorrent-based release system. Rossi stated that it takes
about 15 minutes to build and 15 minutes to release to the servers. The build and release process has
zero downtime. Changes to Facebook are rolled out daily.[213]

Facebook used a combination platform based on HBase to store data across distributed machines.
Using a tailing architecture, events are stored in log files, and the logs are tailed. The system rolls
these events up and writes them to storage. The user interface then pulls the data out and displays it
to users. Facebook handles requests as AJAX behavior. These requests are written to a log file using
Scribe (developed by Facebook).[214]

Data is read from these log files using Ptail, an internally built tool to aggregate data from multiple
Scribe stores. It tails the log files and pulls data out. Ptail data are separated into three streams and
sent to clusters in different data centers (Plugin impression, News feed impressions, Actions (plugin
+ news feed)). Puma is used to manage periods of high data flow (Input/Output or IO). Data is
processed in batches to lessen the number of times needed to read and write under high demand
periods. (A hot article generates many impressions and news feed impressions that cause huge data
skews.) Batches are taken every 1.5 seconds, limited by memory used when creating a hash table.
[214]

Data is then output in PHP format. The backend is written in Java. Thrift is used as the messaging
format so PHP programs can query Java services. Caching solutions display pages more quickly.
The data is then sent to MapReduce servers where it is queried via Hive. This serves as a backup as
the data can be recovered from Hive.[214]

Content delivery network (CDN)

Facebook uses its own content delivery network or "edge network" under the domain fbcdn.net for
serving static data.[215][216] Until the mid 2010s, Facebook also relied on Akamai for CDN
services.[217][218][219]

Hack programming language

On March 20, 2014, Facebook announced a new open-source programming language called Hack.
Before public release, a large portion of Facebook was already running and "battle tested" using the
new language.[220]

User profile/personal timeline

Facebook login/signup screen

Each registered user on Facebook has a personal profile that shows their posts and content.[221]
The format of individual user pages was revamped in September 2011 and became known as
"Timeline", a chronological feed of a user's stories,[222][223] including status updates, photos,
interactions with apps and events.[224] The layout let users add a "cover photo".[224] Users were
given more privacy settings.[224] In 2007, Facebook launched Facebook Pages for brands and
celebrities to interact with their fanbases.[225][226] 100,000 Pages[further explanation needed]
launched in November.[227] In June 2009, Facebook introduced a "Usernames" feature, allowing
users to choose a unique nickname used in the URL for their personal profile, for easier sharing.
[228][229]

In February 2014, Facebook expanded the gender setting, adding a custom input field that allows
users to choose from a wide range of gender identities. Users can also set which set of gender-
specific pronoun should be used in reference to them throughout the site.[230][231][232] In May
2014, Facebook introduced a feature to allow users to ask for information not disclosed by other
users on their profiles. If a user does not provide key information, such as location, hometown, or
relationship status, other users can use a new "ask" button to send a message asking about that item
to the user in a single click.[233][234]