If FB is your friend?

In February, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg celebrated the social network’s 14th birthday by admitting: “Over the years I’ve made almost every mistake you can imagine.”

Next year he can omit the word “almost”. Mr Zuckerberg’s handling of Facebook’s growing pains is evidence of levels of social incompetence only matched by Basil Fawlty. OK, he hasn’t developed any nuclear weapons, nor rubbed sandpaper on a cricket ball recently. Then again, had he done those things, I’m not sure we would know about it.

Facebook failed to disclose a data breach exploited by Cambridge Analytica, threatened to sue journalists if they disclosed the breach and, this week, buried the news that up to 87m users had been affected in the penultimate paragraph of a technical blog. He reluctantly agreed to testify to Congress, and is still declining invitations.