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Strictly speaking, Facebook is a screen ('screen' being a technical term for the physicality of a digital experience). We can say that, to a good approximation,

Strictly speaking, Facebook is a screen ('screen' being a technical term for the physicality of a digital experience). We can say that, to a good approximation, the sum total of our experience of the world beyond our immediate experience comes through screens. In this way, we say that all media is a screen. So, there is your first order experience - your apartment, your car, the road on the way to work, your office, the restaurants and cafes you like, your friends; and there is everything else, ALL mediated by a screen. The world at large, how it looks to you, what you know about it, all mediated by a screen. Facebook is not just a website to millions (billions?) of people. It is THE screen that represents THE most valuable, pleasurable part of their life - their friendly and familial relationships. What makes FB so potent is that it makes these relationships more efficient, and in some sense safer, and erodes that first-order offline experience of relationship, which makes ALL participants more dependent on the screen experience! When you see a group of kids at a cafe hunched over their phones, or a couple on a date hunched over their phones, what do you think they are looking at? What first-order experience are they giving up? Is a thing that can literally steal your real, first-order life away from you, and in such vast numbers, really "just a website"?

root_axis 9y ago
> It is THE screen that represents THE most valuable, pleasurable part of their life - their friendly and familial relationships. I disagree. Millions of people use Facebook, but not nearly as many people rely on Facebook as "THE" preeminent gateway to their loved ones. Most people use Facebook on a spectrum somewhere between "post a few times a day" and "lurk when I'm bored". People who centralize their entire lives around Facebook are pretty rare and are usually regarded as somewhat unhealthy in that regard unless they engage Facebook as part of their business or something similar. If Facebook disappeared tomorrow, people would groan for a few days but rapidly switch to SMS/Hangouts/WhatsApp/Snapchat or any of the other myriad communication services. The worst case scenario is that some people would lose some valuable contacts that they didn't already have backed up through iCloud or Google, but this isn't a life-changing event as anyone who has ever lost a cell-phone prior to 2007 can attest to. > When you see a group of kids at a cafe hunched over their phones, or a couple on a date hunched over their phones, what do you think they are looking at? People browse a variety of applications on their phone of which Facebook is only one fraction, especially among "kids" who are much more active on networks other than Facebook. Beyond that, "being haunched over" one's phone is more a sign of accessibility than necessity; if people could only access Facebook on a PC they'd just open up some other crap on their phone. Seriously... it really is just a website.

root_axis 9y ago

> It is THE screen that represents THE most valuable, pleasurable part of their life - their friendly and familial relationships. I disagree. Millions of people use Facebook, but not nearly as many people rely on Facebook as "THE" preeminent gateway to their loved ones. Most people use Facebook on a spectrum somewhere between "post a few times a day" and "lurk when I'm bored". People who centralize their entire lives around Facebook are pretty rare and are usually regarded as somewhat unhealthy in that regard unless they engage Facebook as part of their business or something similar. If Facebook disappeared tomorrow, people would groan for a few days but rapidly switch to SMS/Hangouts/WhatsApp/Snapchat or any of the other myriad communication services. The worst case scenario is that some people would lose some valuable contacts that they didn't already have backed up through iCloud or Google, but this isn't a life-changing event as anyone who has ever lost a cell-phone prior to 2007 can attest to. > When you see a group of kids at a cafe hunched over their phones, or a couple on a date hunched over their phones, what do you think they are looking at? People browse a variety of applications on their phone of which Facebook is only one fraction, especially among "kids" who are much more active on networks other than Facebook. Beyond that, "being haunched over" one's phone is more a sign of accessibility than necessity; if people could only access Facebook on a PC they'd just open up some other crap on their phone. Seriously... it really is just a website.