In my personal opinion, the Facebook employee's response shows that he doesn't understand the company's high-level business goals. Their developers may think they are building an open web, but it's very clear the company is only interested in a closed web they control.

Based on my interaction with website API developers, most of them honestly believe that they are building an open web. But let's face it, the API is a benefit to them and creates a critical dependency for the user of the API. It's basically vendor lock-in.