People around the world are wishing Facebook a "Happy Birthday". Fourteen years ago, now-ubiquitous social network first launched.
Back then, it was run out of a residence hall at Harvard University in Boston and was available only to students at several elite universities across the United States. Today, the company is based in California and boasts over 2 billion active users.
In a Facebook post, the company's CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg acknowledged that the site still has a long way to go "to bring the world closer together." Facebook and other social networks have faced increased scrutiny in recent years, with analysts pointing out that the platforms have been abused by political extremists and used as vessels to disseminate disinformation on behalf of foreign governments, most notably Russia.
The company recently announced major changes to its newsfeed feature that will promote content shared by a user's friends at the expense of third-party publishers and news organizations, many of which have come to rely heavily on Facebook for online traffic.