There were plenty of internet forums and even IRC and Usenet before Facebook. Maybe FB has pushed out other, better, places for people to gather and communicated?

There is a lot of value in a marketplace for discovery and consistent interface. Let us not echo the sentiment of the infamous poster suggesting dropbox would fail because "who wouldn't just spin up an ftp server backed by source control".

From the stance of democratizing the internet, for better or worse, I don't think we can sit here and deny the formative role Facebook played in getting people shut out from the net involved with it.

I guess I would argue that Facebook is not "the net" -- it's AOL 2.0. You're probably right that has value of its own, but it's not the same value as an open internet, or the promise of what was once the worldwide web.

Backdoors in your cell phone OS can be used to catch criminals. They can also be used to spy on innocents. Sometimes the cost isn't worth it.