Bridges Mark Zuckerberg Destroyed

[Commentary] The World Wide Web was founded on links, and without links, there won’t be a web. Without links the experience of being on the internet will become one of a centralised, linear, passive, inward-looking and homogeneous kind. This is happening already, and despite Zuckerberg’s sermon, it is largely Facebook and Instagram who are to be blame for the demise of links, and thereby the death of the open web and all its potentials for a more peaceful world. Mark Zuckerberg killed links (and the web) because he has created a space that is more like the future of television rather than the internet. Unlike what he preaches, Facebook has divided us into small personal bubbles of comfort. We don’t need to do anything, but to swipe with our thumbs (soon even that wouldn’t be necessary with eyeball detection systems)…. Mark Zuckerberg killed the open web and all the bridges it had created in order to make money. But when he, with an innocent face, starts warning the world about walls, divisions and intolerance, it feels like a dark Orwellian nightmare. The open web could have been a remedy at a time when closed borders rule. But Mark Zuckerberg destroyed it.

[Hossein Derakhshan is an Iranian-Canadian author, freelance journalist and media analyst.]