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I agree with your sentiment, its a shame to see Facebook displacing independent forums. But, just to offer another aspect to think about: I have a child with a

I agree with your sentiment, its a shame to see Facebook displacing independent forums. But, just to offer another aspect to think about: I have a child with a rare and serious medical condition. There is a facebook group for that condition, and nearly every family in the UK who is affected is in that facebook group. Its very powerful to be able to share notes like that, between us we are able to zero in on best practice and then suggest things to doctors. I suspect that without Facebooks reach we would not have been able to get so many people in one virtual space. I notice there are facebook groups for practically every rare condition you can imagine. tldr: Facebooks ability to reach beyond the sort of people that sign up for forums can be very useful in certain important scenarios.

gregknicholson 8y ago
A single communication network with wide reach is very valuable, for exactly this reason. It's not necessary — and I think it's harmful — for that network to be controlled on the whim of one person (assuming you accept that Zuckerberg isn't a robot or a lizard or something).
- dfxm12 8y ago
  Do you really think Zuckerberg is personally concerned with the "Rare disease - UK" Facebook group to the point where he personally will wipe it out arbitrarily? What if this group was in Reddit and all of a sudden the mod, on a whim, locked all the threads? What if this group met in the local community center and the building owner, on a whim, decided to sell the building to someone who didn't want such groups to meet there? Someone has to be in charge of a "single communication network". If your community owes its existence to it, they are at their whim, and in a way, that's the cost of doing business. This isn't unique to Facebook or Mark Zuckerberg. If the community is strong, they can find a way to overcome such whims.
  - gregknicholson 8y ago
    > Someone has to be in charge of a "single communication network". This is false. Pen, paper, English and walking is a communication network. If there are multiple competing implementations of a shared spec, in practice no one group can control it. (This is why it's important to have multiple competing web browser engines.)

gregknicholson 8y ago

A single communication network with wide reach is very valuable, for exactly this reason. It's not necessary — and I think it's harmful — for that network to be controlled on the whim of one person (assuming you accept that Zuckerberg isn't a robot or a lizard or something).

dfxm12 8y ago
Do you really think Zuckerberg is personally concerned with the "Rare disease - UK" Facebook group to the point where he personally will wipe it out arbitrarily? What if this group was in Reddit and all of a sudden the mod, on a whim, locked all the threads? What if this group met in the local community center and the building owner, on a whim, decided to sell the building to someone who didn't want such groups to meet there? Someone has to be in charge of a "single communication network". If your community owes its existence to it, they are at their whim, and in a way, that's the cost of doing business. This isn't unique to Facebook or Mark Zuckerberg. If the community is strong, they can find a way to overcome such whims.
- gregknicholson 8y ago
  > Someone has to be in charge of a "single communication network". This is false. Pen, paper, English and walking is a communication network. If there are multiple competing implementations of a shared spec, in practice no one group can control it. (This is why it's important to have multiple competing web browser engines.)