The tech winners and losers of 2016 (hint: Facebook – and Facebook)

The year 2016 was supposed to be when the tech bubble finally burst. Instead the world blew up. Amid Brexit, the election of Donald Trump, and the increasingly catastrophic consequences of climate change, the dominance of a handful of technology companies over society became increasingly obvious – from Facebook's troubling impact on democracy to Elon Musk's plan to colonize a new planet before we destroy this one. Still, if there's one thing we can learn from this year in technology, it's that no matter how bad things get, someone in Silicon Valley will make money off it. The social network continued its relentless campaign to swallow the internet whole, racking up almost $6bn in profit in the first three quarters of the year and soaring to 1.79 billion monthly active users.