[tobr]

Why would it be remarkable that a few popular technologies come out of a big, rich technology company? People who create such technologies work at places like that. But there’s nothing about React or GraphQL that makes them only possible at Facebook.

[prostoalex]

A big, rich technology company has the resources to put people on the project full time and a revenue stream to justify such broad architectural project.

There's also financial support for building a community around improving the tech, by encouraging outside contributions via meetups, conferences, social events, better technical documentation, etc.

At smaller scale startup an engineer is surely welcome to work on his skunkworks project, but justifying expensive large-scale architectural undertakings on company's dime is problematic. Especially if a quicker fix is available and buys the company a chance to kick the problem down the road.

With that said, it's not impossible to build a major popular piece of technology within a small company (Joyent and Node.js being a good example), it's just harder.

[tobr]

You’re repeating what I wrote - Big tech is likely to produce new tech, but new tech comes from other places too.

This discussion is mostly irrelevant to the fact that this particular company is completely reckless and unethical. The technology they accidentally produce while building a dystopia to make people click on ads[1] does not justify anything.

1: https://youtu.be/iFTWM7HV2UI