&gt; Facebook does not create value, it merely captures it<p>Do you really mean that literally?<p>It is a service which some (not all) people do enjoy using, and which connects people in ways they weren&#x27;t previously connected allowing for new opportunities, and therefore represents value to those people which did not exist before they had access to the service. It has therefore created value for humans in the aggregate, that is an undeniable and objective fact. One person or another&#x27;s individual opinion of its value in their lives, or the value it ought to have or not have in others&#x27; lives, in no way changes this fact.<p>I don&#x27;t know what exactly what you mean by the create&#x2F;capture distinction, and I&#x27;d be really interested to hear you elaborate on this point and define those terms.<p>But at least according to my somewhat-plain-English interpretation of those words, Facebook pretty demonstrably does both. It creates value by providing a service, and captures value (a great deal more, probably, monetarily, if that&#x27;s even measurable) from the information generated by people (always voluntarily, because they want to: the key fact to keep in mind) using that service. No?