Right now, you read this (very possibly having arrived via Facebook), Mark Zuckerberg is one of the richest, influential, and world-historically diabolical figures in the history of American commerce. Just nine years ago, he gave a guest lecture at Harvard to a mostly empty room, and today we can watch in disbelief.

What a mensch! The 22nd richest man in the world was paid just a single buckeroo in 2013, Bloomberg reports, according to Facebook's latest regulatory filings. That's so cool of him, except it's also misleading boardroom propaganda, and you shouldn't fall for it.

In Fortune magazine, Erin Griffith put together a chart exposing "Silicon Valley's single degree of separation," where A-listers are "just an adviser, an investor, a co-founder, an acquirer, or a director away from another."

Mark Zuckerberg's $2 billion buyout of Oculus Rift is just the latest step in Big Tech's creepy march from software to sci-fi: Google and Facebook have dumped billions into companies that have nothing to do with their original projects in search or social. Relentlessly, the two companies are pushing toward a dystopian future in which privacy is null and we wear social networks on our faces.

Instagram is experimenting with using Facebook Places for location rather than Foursquare. This is bad for Foursquare's chance to make money by being the "location layer" for the internet, although Pinterest, Vine, and Flickr use Foursquare for free. It's bad for Instagram users because Facebook Places blows.

What's written in Secret is having trouble staying secret. Earlier this week, comments made on the anonymous app were the catalyst for an implosion at GitHub. Now Facebook exec Andrew "Boz" Bosworth is publicly defending himself against criticism from a nameless tweety bird icon.

Facebook pulled the best practical joke of the internet age: the company convinced countless celebrities, bands, and "brands" that its service was the best way to reach people with eyeballs and money. Maybe it is! But now that companies have taken the bait, Facebook is holding the whole operation hostage.

Facebook released new models of its West campus expansion in Menlo Park to Business Insider. The 22-acre complex was designed by Frank Gehry, but altered after Facebook asked to make the plans "more anonymous" to better reflect "the culture of Facebook."

Today in the occasional internet diary blog of Mark Zuckerberg: the cherubic chief executive is cranky with the federal government, and is telling the rest of us about his spat with the president.

Glenn Greenwald's Snowden files are the bottomless mimosas of cyber-security scares. The latest dispatch from The Intercept describes how the National Security Agency exploited Silicon Valley by disguising itself as a fake Facebook server in order to infect targeted computers with malware.

Facebook's 57-acre campus at 1 Hacker Way was temporarily sealed off Tuesday night while police investigated a threat that was later declared unsubstantiated and "non-credible." Re/Code called it the "first significant scare" for the $179 billion social network.

Bas Bosschert, the CTO of Double Think, claims that hackers can access your WhatsApp database using any Android app, even after today's update. "Facebook didn't need to buy WhatsApp to read your chats," he concludes.

The corporate narrative around WhatsApp's obscurity-to-billions story centers around values. The company's founders, we're told, respect our privacy above all else—except $19 billion dollars from a company no one trusts to respect our privacy. Now one group is asking for government intervention.

The biggest problem with Facebook is all the shootouts, unsolved mysteries, and occult strangling attacks at its massive Menlo Park campus. Worry no more: the San Jose Mercury News reports Facebook will privately fund a police officer all on its own.

Ever since acquisition rumors started building in late 2012, WhatsApp—the fast-growing messaging service with serious outer-bubble appeal—seemed destined for a multi-billion exit. But how, pray tell, did Facebook decide 19 was the "magic number"? One source tells Valleywag that it began with a $250 million funding offer.

In an email this afternoon, Sean Parker, who became a billionaire solely because of his shares in Facebook, said he hadn't received questions about the unnatural disaster brewing outside his West Village home because: "I don't check my Facebook msgs that often."

In tech, as in love, things always appear more attractive when they're in high demand. According to The Information, Google devised an awkward and costly way to find out if a startup has any corporate suitors, but WhatsApp declined.

The law of platforms puts boundaries on appropriate interaction between Facebook (a means for content distribution) and Buzzfeed (a content manufacturer). But, somehow, the two tech companies keep getting caught in an unholy alliance, including a little love from Facebook's $19 billion WhatsApp acquisition.

WhatsApp's 55 employees have $19 billion reasons to celebrate, including Igor Solomennikov, an iPhone developer who has been with the company since 2009. He just posted this shot of the finest bubbly Mark Zuckerberg can buy.