Facebook is on a quest to destroy the metaverse and the Web3

Mark Zuckerberg's tech empire has a long history of using centralized systems to hurt users. It is now trying to join Web3.

Opinion

The future of how we socialize online is being defined as we speak, and it's far too important to leave things to companies like Meta and other mega social enterprises. A cursory glance at Meta's history suffices to understand its tendency to miss the mark badly.

Some companies like to use Web3 principles to right Web2 wrongs. And as a poster child for large centralized organizations, Meta offers us some of the most useful examples of these wrongs.

Let's talk about three times Meta failed to build the future of online social experiences.

It has limited Open Graph

In 2010, Meta - which was still operating as Facebook at the time - launched its "Open Graph" protocol, providing developers with a network of friends-to-friends connections to encourage others to adopt its apps. It was a way for users to pass their Facebook identity from one app to another, making it easy for developers to provide those users with a personalized experience. However, a few years later, the company shifted gears to become ruthless in cutting off its friends, newsfeed, and other data access for developers.

The main reason for this was to limit competition, as Facebook was concerned that people would reverse-engineer its social graphics and create their own versions of Facebook. So, it ended up killing a product that many in the community today call essential. It was ahead of its time, until it no longer made business sense.

Facebook felt it was arming its competitors by giving them this data, and with its centralized power, Facebook had the unilateral ability to radically cut off this access.

He took the @Metaverse Instagram handle from the user who registered him

Online social identities are of great importance to users: they represent who you are and carry the weight of your efforts and the time you spend online. So when Facebook rebranded itself as Meta, getting a new logo and image, a situation with social media handles presented an unforeseen problem.

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