I am continuing down my abstraction rabbit hole. I wanted to better visualize what I have been seeing in my head so that I can share with other people, but also so I can keep working on other concepts within this dimension. I have adequately supported how I see (computer science) abstraction in service of APIs, derivatives to further shape the layers of (computer) (financial) abstraction, as well as expanding on how APIs become extractive once they are leveraged as part of complex financial derivatives.
Let’s start at the beginning again. In 2008 we were all enjoying having our new found smartphones with a camera, and all these cool little applications on it. We had this cool new device in our pockets just as the web was expanding around the world, and now we could take it with us in our pockets. Neat.
At the time, super savvy smart entrepreneurs came along like Mark Zuckerberg and produced account and messaging APIs that would allow us to sign up for this new thing called social media-where we could find all of our friends and stay connected. Neat.
Zuckerberg began paying other super savvy smart developers to develop new digital resources that we could take advantage of via our smartphones. These developers were hired to abstract away these “social” aspects of our lives into individual digital resources that could be exposed as HTTP APIs.
More people joined. The network grew. We were able to find our friends, share our photos and videos, and send public and private messages back and forth. Social media was the new cool thing that we could all do via our desktop, web, and now mobile applications. Neat.
Facebook grew so big that people began to invest in Facebook and see it as a potential opportunity to make money. Facebook didn’t have a well-defined business model, but who cares, they were growing, adding users, and generating increasingly valuable data.
With all of this growth, Facebook wanted to shift things into overdrive and they made their APIs available to 3rd-party developers so that anyone can come and build applications. It was an amazing opportunity for any developer to build something cool and potentially get noticed.
This is where we got game changing revolutionary applications like WhatsApp, Instagram, and Cambridge Analytica (Neat). These developers built these useful and very helpful new applications on top of Facebook APIs and were able to generate entirely new businesses within their ecosystem. Neat.
The data grew on the Facebook platform with all of these new applications putting data into the system. So savvy Facebook paid more developers to abstract a couple of new higher level APIs on top of all of that data, producing insights and advertising APIs against all of those users who were increasingly using Facebook and other applications.
The biggest of those applications within the Facebook API ecosystem soon got acquired by Facebook and the founders became very wealthy. Unlike the number 2 and 3 applications in each of the categories of images and messaging (Lina Khan will notice soon). Now Instagram and eventually WhatsApp APIs and apps were part of facebook data machine, harvesting away!
Around the same Facebook decided to go public and bring on even more investment now that they have a real grownup business model. Meanwhile all the Facebook, Instagram, and eventually WhatsApp users are still just living their lives putting content, data, and media into the system.
Likely it happened before, but about this time is where Mark Zuckerberg’s priorities changed. This is where he sees Facebook users a little differently than before and he isn’t so interested in helping them as he is about mining their data and keeping them producing as much data as possible to feed into his insights and advertising engine.
This is where the flow of APIs is reversed and they become extractive of users data, rather than whatever is originally promised. This is where APIs become complex financial derivatives with multiple layers. This is where good APIs go bad and are only interesting in producing more data at scale. This is where I begin questioning my faith in the API gawds.
You see, the Facebook ecosystem has become a funhouse of mirrors within many layers of complex financial derivatives powered by APIs. Each layer of the abstraction is selfishly hammering away at their layer, completely unaware of the bigger picture. Facebook is producing entirely new markets where everyone is betting on something different, with lots of money to be made on the up and down, as well as coming or going.
Along the way all of this has caught the attention of the FTC and Lina Khan, who is really interested in primarily Instagram and WhatsApp, but really all of it. There are many layers to this abstraction with artificial intelligence being just the latest abstraction to obfuscate and distract from any accountability, while simultaneously distilling every extract into an AI-powered casino inside and outside the Facebook ecosystem.
Now imagine what things look like in 2025 with a new administration and ridiculous clown posse. It won’t get any prettier or less complex. It will just get more insane and chaotic, with lots of money to be made off bets and predictions being made at all levels. It is by design. It is a crypto market on your images, videos, messages, and all the daily emotion that swirls around them. All while you are just trying to use your iphone and make ends meet.
Mark Zuckerberg is so far beyond caring about what you want as a Facebook, Instagram, or WhatsApp user. Developers operating at each layer of API abstraction can’t see or care about the bigger picture. They are paid well and stay ignorant. This is all by design. The ecosystem is closely monitored and controlled, as it has been since Instagram and WhatsApp acquisitions.
There are endless businesses to step up to any of the tables in the Facebook advertising casino and place bets with wheelbarrows of money. There are an endless number of bets being placed on Facebook as part of the primary market, as well as applications hoping to dethrone facebook via secondary markets. These API driven complex financial derivatives are going through another round of abstraction, smoke, and mirrors as part of the shift to the AI economy, moving it all well beyond anyone’s view, and keeping it in the hands of a few.
All of this is happening while the extraction and distillation continues across billions of users. All Facebook wants is users to keep producing data. Facebook doesn’t care if it is real or fake, useful or harmful. Facebook just wants the platform to keep producing data and insights that can be used as part of their ads and insights casino or distilled down as part of their AI models.
And, this is just Facebook. Can we talk about Microsoft, Amazon, and others?
Ok, I got this one a little further down the road with my visuals. The visuals are crude, but hopefully get the point across. Like the narrative I can polish and hone the visuals. I think I got more on the extraction front this round, and can point to more of the layers of the complex financial derivatives. Next, I think I need more work on the AI piece, as well as the primary and secondary financial markets pieces. Anywho, enjoying doing this thinking on a Saturday morning!
