When last week Meta Platforms Inc. CEO Mark Zuckerberg shared a photograph of his Facebook page from 20 years ago — back when it was “thefacebook” — it was, for me, a little like the sponge cake that cast Proust back in time. The bare-bones profile page felt achingly familiar because I was one of thefacebook’s first few dozen users.

In those first weeks, with just 1,000 or so Harvard students registered, the web site that would become Facebook was spartan in design and limited in what it promised. It hadn’t yet added all the compelling bells-and-whistles that have transformed the platform into the election-warping, government-shaking, memory-making behemoth it is today. In retrospect, though, some of its fatal flaws should perhaps have been obvious from the start.

Us early Facebookers used the site for three things. First, and most important, we could choose our own profile picture. This was vital, as our photos in the official school directory were often taken during our first days on campus, mostly with regrettable hometown haircuts. It also meant that the performative aspect of Facebook was its most distinctive feature from the........

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