I feel like you have that exactly backwards? To me it was a shift in roles in the old field of dreams storyline. I.e. "if you build it, they will come".

In Web 1.0, you posted content and an audience came. In Web 2.0, you tried to open an empty field and commenters came and played with each other.

If anything, what happened next was a sort of halfway reversion, as the platforms tried to stratify and monetize two types of user. A subset who were the Web 2.0 contributors and another tier of more passive consumers. I think a lot of the "likes" stuff was also less about self-moderating channels and more about making passive users feel like they're engaging without actually having to contribute anything substantive.

There was plenty of discussion online prior to XmlHttpRequests, see vBulletin, Fark, Digg, etc. The only thing new about “Web 2.0” was a page refresh not being needed after an http request.

No, metrics and growth always existed and could be measured there wasn’t some technological breakthrough to enable that with Web 2.0. They, Facebook, decided to use it as their guiding principle. They decided to force the feed on their users. They knew their users had no real alternative and the value they had built with getting everyone on the network itself.

If anything, their move was anti-web 2.0. As they moved forum and blogs and news, pretty much all open and accessible content into their walled garden. Even the famous quote “know what’s cooler than being a millionaire? Being a billionaire.” Or however it goes, is a ruthless capitalist telling Zuck he needs to wake up and realized how valuable this thing he’s built really could be.

Carry on if you want but I think you’re very much the one that gets it backwards? Do you remember how it all transpired or are you too young to really understand what it was and what Web 2.0 really was about?

uhh what? Social media has been a thing since the very inception of the internet. What did feel like a massive transition is the massive prevalence of corporatized social media.

I feel like if you asked the a random warez group in 2010 if they would purposely make a "business" friendly version of themselves on a social media site owned by Microsoft they would have laughed in my faces.

So you think consumer engagement ultimately drives what types of tech that companies invest in building? I can see that argument.

Why do companies want consumer engagement to start with?

Letting unchecked greed guide decision-making is not a new phenomenon that came out of Web 2.0 though. To use your metaphor, the heroin was human attention. Web 2.0 was, at best, the syringe.

What I’m taking issue with is you disagreeing with the GP assertion that Facebook made purposeful business decisions.

I agree that a Facebook had a powerful incentive to act this way. But they didn’t have to. The fact that they chose to reflects on their moral character.

Internal leaks let us know that Facebook has pretty advanced sentiment analysis internally. They knew that they were (are) making people miserable. They know that outrage causes engagement.

Other internal leaks let us know that Facebook was aware of how much disinformation was (is) being used on their platform to influence elections. To attack democracy.

They didn’t just look the other way, which would be reason enough to condemn them. They helped. When they saw how much money the propagandists were willing to pay, they built improved tools to better help them propagandize.

After the UK was shattered by the Brexit lies, when Facebook were called in front of parliament and congress to explain themselves over the Cambridge Analytica and related misinformation campaigns, they stalled, they lied, they played semantic word games to avoid admitting what is clearly stated in the leaked memos.

These were all choices. People should be held accountable for making awful choices.

Even if those choices result in them making a lot of money.

It sounds kind of crazy to even have to say that, doesn’t it? But that is where we are, partly because of arguments like yours from otherwise well-meaning people.

Don’t absolve them. Hold them accountable.

Zuckerberg wants to own the whole world and thinks you’re an idiot for trusting him. An egocentic sociopath who can’t imagine trusting anyone else because he knows what he will do when you give him your trust.