“Facebook has destroyed the open web”

Facebook hasn&#x27;t destroyed the web - it&#x27;s still there and functioning fine. Hyperlinks still work.<p>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&#x27;s made it easier to post misinformation and spread it quickly.<p>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.<p>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&#x27;s a mess.<p>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.

It is ironic considering there is a popup when you scroll down to the end of the article that asks you to share it on Facebook.

Totally agree. Facebook is dotcom equivalent of AOL. Hopefully it goes away.

And I remember the net before the web. FTP, Gopher, and lynx. So why did a &#x27;web browser&#x27; succeed? Because you could integrate bandwidth hogging graphics?? or was it to mimic the gui interfaces of mac OS, windows, BEos, etc? I still mourn the loss of the newsgroups and usenet. Well, Usenet is still around, but in name only. So what&#x27;s next-VR interfaces?<p>The web and FB has made us dumber- we point and click and no longer have to search and think.

I&#x27;ve read the &quot;blogs were great, FB is bad&quot; article a few times in recent years and put it off as whining. I was a whiner myself when Usenet gave way to blogs but got over it.<p>However, it might be different in emerging markets where phones are the primary platform and FB may be dominating, not really sure if that&#x27;s true but certainly different from the US.

The article is as stupid as the website it&#x27;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&#x27;t be held against it.<p>More generally, populism by itself does not threaten democracy. It&#x27;s when the people that elect demagogues let those demagogues destroy public institutions that democracy is undermined. But it&#x27;s the people that are at fault here, they are the ones that let themselves get hoodwinked.<p>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&#x27;t cured of that disease until WW2 showed them how utterly stupid warmongering in the Industrial age was.

I feel &quot;everyone&quot; being afraid of words has destroyed the open web. Edit this, censor that, surpress this, etc etc.<p>Complacency and intolerance of other ideas is and always will be the issue.

To echo what everyone else has said, my feed is utter garbage and a lot of friends post stuff that makes me cringe. I&#x27;ve unsubscribed from the majority of my friends so now all I see are ads and sponsored posts.<p>Here&#x27;s the thing, I get to see what events my friends are going to, which usually end up being really fun and not something I would have found out about otherwise. So nowadays I only use facebook to find and management events to attend.

The vast majority of those on Facebook were not the ones participating in the open web.

Open web sucked before Facebook. Facebook has created a nice safe sandbox for most people.

why couldn&#x27;t we create a decentralized social network. could such a thing exist?

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

Only fools believe (listen) a thief. As much as any PR guy.

&quot;Against this global community&quot; &quot;Going against progress&quot; Sorry Zuck, but shut the fuck up. All you want is more money and power. A great example is the free &quot;internet&quot; initiative he&#x27;s pushing; all to lock people in Facebook.<p>This guy truly is, the world&#x27;s biggest hypocrite. &lt;&#x2F;rant&gt;

Facebook is a fad. A damn big one I&#x27;ll grant you but it&#x27;s already losing it&#x27;s grip on the next generation of users. It&#x27;s huge now but I feel it&#x27;s already lost it&#x27;s luster, I mean come on, I&#x27;m a huge user (keeping up with friends across states is damn hard otherwise) and I can&#x27;t stand being on it, and I know a lot of friends who feel the same.<p>It will have it&#x27;s time, in due time. Hyperlinks are not dead.