“Facebook has destroyed the open web”

Facebook hasn't destroyed the web - it's still there and functioning fine. Hyperlinks still work.

What FB has done is made it easier for the lazy to connect with and stay within their own interest groups. FB has made it easy for people to ignore negative information with tons of cat pictures (I am as guilty as anyone for that) and cheerful little meaningless quotes. It's made it easier to post misinformation and spread it quickly.

But none of that has destroyed the internet. The internet (or more specifically, information) was going to get harder to find and navigate anyway, once you turn it loose on a few billion people.

Sure, in the early days, you could encapsulate 75% of existing websites in one directory, but thanks to the efforts of spammers, link farmers, and other lowlife, in addition to the efforts of well-meaning people, and faulty and well-working search algorithms, it's a mess.

But it was going to happen and FB is not to blame for it. If they are to blame for it, we all equally share the guilt.

If you don't have the younger markets, you don't have a future. Once their parents are on a service, the younger market isn't if they don't need to be.

Facebook is delaying it by playing big in International markets and in developing countries but the social aspects can't be outrun and won't change, as I said, it's a BIG fad but it's a fad and it will die a fad's death in due time.

Why do think Zuck is pushing the Facebook private Internet in the developing world so hard? He's not stupid, he sees the writing on the wall.

The article is as stupid as the website it's on is. Value-added sharing mechanisms that take the expertise out of creating useful Internet content does not de-democratize the Internet. You are still as free as before to make your own websites and share your content the way it was done before Facebook. Facebook is popular but that can't be held against it.

More generally, populism by itself does not threaten democracy. It's when the people that elect demagogues let those demagogues destroy public institutions that democracy is undermined. But it's the people that are at fault here, they are the ones that let themselves get hoodwinked.

Napoleon destroyed the French Republic. But the French were absolutely complicit and just let him do it because they were hungry for empire. All of Europe was like that back then and she wasn't cured of that disease until WW2 showed them how utterly stupid warmongering in the Industrial age was.

Please don't. If you have a substantive critique to make, you're more than welcome to, but "shut the fuck up, "all you want is money and power", and "world's biggest hypocrite" is the opposite of that, and predictably degraded the thread.

Just like AOL, many facebook users think facebook is the internet.