Do you only read articles you agree with? That sounds like a strong case of confirmation bias. Besides, the core of the article does not reflect an elaboration of that paragraph, you should give it a try.
I also immediately thought about the MSN customization days! Is fb the customizable platform of this time?
For MSN it was also non-officially supported and it grew quite a community of devs who tinkered around things like this, would be interesting to see a renaissance of such projects.