4 ms·

I really don't understand why anyone uses Facebook. You have a phone, which can communicate with your friends. It's only remotely useful for its near-monopoly

I really don't understand why anyone uses Facebook. You have a phone, which can communicate with your friends. It's only remotely useful for its near-monopoly on event planning, and imo that's a job for the trustbusters.

praneshp 9y ago
> I really don't understand why anyone uses Facebook. You really cannot? Like, can you not imagine one person, who doesn't realize (or worse, and more likely IMO, does not care) about the privacy implications? It's not hard to understand at all, I think.
- leggomylibro 9y ago
  Okay, fine, I don't want to understand; it jives against the charitable way that I want to think about people. I guess there's a whole lot of cognitive dissonance between how fucking stupid People reliably are and how kind and admirable persons can be, though - I should probably just get used to it.
spinco 9y ago
Compared to a phone (SMS) and other messaging apps (whatsapp, email, signal), fb messenger has two big benefits for me: * Cross platform: I don't have to type on a tiny screen when I'm in front of a computer, and won't lose my account or my messages if I lose my phone or phone number. * Discoverability: most people who I meet are on it, so I can reach out to people I meet at events as well as friends of friends. I don't love messenger. I use Messenger Lite on my phone to avoid most of the snapchat/gif/events/birthdays features. But I'm not aware of any other cross-platform messaging app with that discoverability, let alone one free of privacy issues.
- leggomylibro 9y ago
  Which is sort of weird, isn't it? As little as 10-15 years ago there was a huge flourishing ecosystem of IM and chat clients, many of which worked together fairly seamlessly. Individual clients like Pidgin would happily amalgamate several platforms together. Now, at least in terms of usage, it's a blasted hellscape of a one-pony show - what happened?
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
- gruez 9y ago
  >Cross platform: I don't have to type on a tiny screen when I'm in front of a computer, and won't lose my account or my messages if I lose my phone or phone number. email isn't cross platform? >Discoverability: most people who I meet are on it, so I can reach out to people I meet at events as well as friends of friends. doesn't everyone have an email address?
  - Gaelan 9y ago
    You can’t just type someone’s name into the To field of an email.

praneshp 9y ago

> I really don't understand why anyone uses Facebook. You really cannot? Like, can you not imagine one person, who doesn't realize (or worse, and more likely IMO, does not care) about the privacy implications? It's not hard to understand at all, I think.

leggomylibro 9y ago
Okay, fine, I don't want to understand; it jives against the charitable way that I want to think about people. I guess there's a whole lot of cognitive dissonance between how fucking stupid People reliably are and how kind and admirable persons can be, though - I should probably just get used to it.

spinco 9y ago

Compared to a phone (SMS) and other messaging apps (whatsapp, email, signal), fb messenger has two big benefits for me: * Cross platform: I don't have to type on a tiny screen when I'm in front of a computer, and won't lose my account or my messages if I lose my phone or phone number. * Discoverability: most people who I meet are on it, so I can reach out to people I meet at events as well as friends of friends. I don't love messenger. I use Messenger Lite on my phone to avoid most of the snapchat/gif/events/birthdays features. But I'm not aware of any other cross-platform messaging app with that discoverability, let alone one free of privacy issues.

leggomylibro 9y ago
Which is sort of weird, isn't it? As little as 10-15 years ago there was a huge flourishing ecosystem of IM and chat clients, many of which worked together fairly seamlessly. Individual clients like Pidgin would happily amalgamate several platforms together. Now, at least in terms of usage, it's a blasted hellscape of a one-pony show - what happened?
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
gruez 9y ago
>Cross platform: I don't have to type on a tiny screen when I'm in front of a computer, and won't lose my account or my messages if I lose my phone or phone number. email isn't cross platform? >Discoverability: most people who I meet are on it, so I can reach out to people I meet at events as well as friends of friends. doesn't everyone have an email address?
- Gaelan 9y ago
  You can’t just type someone’s name into the To field of an email.