> If they didn't have the incentive to get a monopoly we would have kept a more decentralized web.
And we would have kept a more inconvenient web, since without that incentive, Facebook etc. would never have had reason to pay for an army of software developers to implement and improve the site and servers to host it.
Yes, absolutely. Facebook became successful because at the time it was much more convenient than existing ways of accomplishing the same thing it did (interacting socially with other people, meeting new people), including even existing websites like myspace which were themselves more convenient than trying to create one's own website and grow a community, or traveling to meet people face-to-face.
My claim was only ever about the past. I don't know why you think it was about the present.
I expect you will respond by trying to claim that Facebook is no longer convenient, and that this -- not whether it was ever convenient in the past -- is what is really important. Two things:
1. Even if this were true, the finite historical period during which it was convenient to people still has value, which is all that my original claim requires.
2. But it is not true. It is still very convenient to the millions of people who continue to use it, as can be plainly seen from the fact that millions of people continue to use it.
If they didn't have the incentive to get a monopoly we would have kept a more decentralized web.