Facebook hosting media content

When Facebook announced they were offering to host content from media sites like The New York Times, the media went into a frenzy of apocalyptic prediction, with Mark Zuckerberg in the role of Mephistopheles.

All this sound and fury, signifying nothing. Whether media sites allow Facebook to host their content or not won't meaningfully change things one way or the other, and much of the FUD being spread would be energy better spent focused on other far larger problems.

From Eugenwei.com.

Facebook's developer conference was on last week and one of the announcements to come out was around its intention to start hosting Media Companies own content within Facebook (so you wouldn't have to go to an external website when clicking on a link). Personally, I dislike the whole idea as it's going back to the idea of the 'walled garden' which was promoted in the early 2000's across the Internet. It's ceding complete control to Facebook (which granted is happening already as more and more people live under the impression that Facebook is the Internet).

Are you comfortable with the idea of this? With Google, we all bought into the idea/mindset of a single search engine and accepted that it controlled the order of ranking. But it largely followed the ruleset of connecting to, and sending you to external websites. Are we all happy to live within the Facebook walled garden? Does anyone care?