Through all its evolutions and shortcomings - or perhaps in spite of them - Facebook persists as the single-most influential and populated social media platform on the planet.
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It's estimated there are nearly 1.5 billion active daily users of Facebook worldwide. Astonishingly, it's also estimated there are 2.53 billion smartphones in use in the world right now and 85 per cent of their owners use the Facebook app.
However, all is far from well as a result.
It is worth noting at this point that Facebook began in 2003 when founder and current CEO Mark Zuckerberg created an online program called "Facemash" at Harvard in the US, which allowed users to compare photos of their fellow students' faces and select who they thought was "hotter".
Perhaps this helps explain why Facebook has become a particularly nasty, unhelpful echo chamber that does not create or pay for content and makes billions by selling users' data to advertisers.
Perhaps it also partially explains why it is a swamp of meanness.
Why is it that some or even most of the normally good-natured, resilient, cheerful and polite residents of the south-west turn into slavering beasts on Facebook?
The Standard's Facebook page is, unfortunately, a case in point.
The media publishes unpleasant stories, sad stories, hopeful stories, thought-provoking stories and sometimes stories that aren't very good. But while some reactions to these stories are heartening, most are anything but.
So why do we turn mean on Facebook?
Ironically, while Facebook says it is there to bring us together, what it actually achieves is the creation of distance between us. And this distance helps produce meanness. It's simple really. It's much easier to be mean to someone you don't know or who isn't physically near you.
Also Facebook is kind of like a global 24-hour road rage forum. People sound off in ways they'd never dream of doing in person because 99.9 per cent of the time no-one does anything about it.
This behaviour is hurting us individually and diluting and eroding the region's way of life.
It is OK - more than OK - to oppose or disagree with a view. But it is not OK to publicly humiliate a person for holding that view, to troll them or threaten them for their beliefs.
Free speech is a beautiful thing, but it must be carefully tended, weeds must be removed.
The best way for this to happen is personal responsibility. The next time you feel tempted to lash out on Facebook, control yourself. Think before typing.
The people of the south-west are capable of reacting with understanding, compassion, patience and hope.
Try it the next time you want to hate.
