Wow. A LOT of people are upset that Facebook bought Instagram.

What’s interesting about the backlash re: the Instagram acquisition by Facebook (hard to not be happy for the founders who are now one BILLION dollars richer; good on you, Kevin Systrom and Mike Kreiger!) is how familiar it is. Let’s look back, shall we?

Remember MySpace? You may recall that they were this hip upstart until this company run by a guy you may have heard of (Rupert Murdoch) came along and took it off its founder’s hands for a clean billion himself. Where is it today?

Right.

MySpace junkies felt betrayed that one of the world’s largest media monoliths (News Corp.) invaded their community. Because THAT’S what social media really, truly at the end of the day represents to people: a shared community that is driven by the sharing of personal information. It is that simple, but never in the history of publishing has ANY ecosystem been this complex and dynamic.

There are people that feel so betrayed by Instagram’s acquisition that they posted black screens today on their Instagram’s pages. And while I thought this was a bit—oh—dramatic to say the least, I hesitated from judgment and thought about what community really means and how sensitive and protective content-driven communities can become when they feel invaded. Clearly, Facebook has become the new “new media” monolith to be wary of. And, like it or not, Mr. Zuckerberg, has become “the man”.

As usual, I turned to one of my favorite tech gurus, Om Malik, for his take, and it’s pretty great. I heartily recommend it if you’re following this story (which has no shortage of opinions or coverage; it's the tech story of the year thus far) that you check out his blog post today. The LA Times chimed in, too, with some succinct coverage that dissects namely the vitality of Instagram’s mobile market—something that Facebook needs to grab if it’s going to remain the juggernaut that it’s become.

The nut of the story will remain, for weeks and months to come, that a business that doesn’t generate a penny of revenue just got a payday worth $76m per capita (they only have 13 employees). This will, in tech circles, continue to be the story that finally eclipsed Google’s acquisition of YouTube. But what’s most interesting to me about the story is that Facebook (who was once the ‘little guy’ as compared to MySpace less than a decade ago) has taken something from people they thought that they had: complete autonomy over an app, and authority over a growing service that clearly they felt they had some ownership of. I think the technical term is betrayed.

Here is an excerpt from Zuckerberg's statement: "This is an important milestone for Facebook because it's the first time we've ever acquired a product and company with so many users. We don't plan on doing many more of these, if any at all. But providing the best photo sharing experience is one reason why so many people love Facebook and we knew it would be worth bringing these two companies together."

This hardly sounds like a guy who's on the verge of a $100 billion IPO, and someone who could shortly eat Google's lunch. And perhaps that's the real reason for the uproar; that overnight, little communities can become a part of something much larger without any consent or input.