For years, folks complained as companies like Meta shut down or never provided true API experiences. They came out in a time where everyone thought APIs were table stakes and important parts of the web and demonstrated they could ignore that and make a big business.

Now that Meta is talking about building on top of existing interoperability standards, rather than praising this new era of data portability, folks are talking about taking their ball and going home.

Do we want open standards, interoperability, and data portability or not?

It sounds to me like some folks haven’t grown past their teenage anti-establishment, anti-corporate punk phase and just want to “damn the man”. To the extent that I’d like to do the same, I’d rather structurally reduce their ability to amass power and control in the first place.

Social standards and data interoperability were always the best way to do that.

I’m glad to see the old version of the new web start to emerge. I hope we’re not too childish to embrace that and see where it takes us.