> Before Facebook, if I lost someone's contact information, and drifted outside of their social circle for a long enough time, chances were I would never ever s

> Before Facebook, if I lost someone's contact information, and drifted outside of their social circle for a long enough time, chances were I would never ever see or speak to that person again. Not really. Chances are, I knew someone who knew that person and could ask them for the contact information. Before Facebook, how do you think people coordinated class reunions decades after graduation, decades after having spoken with most of the people in their class? Sure, it's easier now, but it wasn't as difficult as you make it out to be. > Before Facebook, if people wanted to organize conversation and cooperation on an information technology platform, the options were to pay $X00-$X000 for a proprietary system, get lucky enough to know about mailing lists, have someone who knew sysadmin do it basically for free, or have everyone learn how to use something like IRC. Again, it really wasn't that hard. You found where the groups you wanted to hang out with were online. It wasn't restricted to mailing lists or IRC. There were forums, etc... And no, you never needed to know a sysadmin to do any of that. That's just silly. > Social networking was an enormous pain in the ass. No it wasn't. You talked to people through the channels you had available to you or, even better, in person! All Facebook, and social media in general, has done is centralize all of that. I'd argue we're now seeing that such centralization isn't a good thing. You're right that the problem isn't necessarily Facebook's fault, it's how people are using it and we're just not good at using it. However, I counter that Facebook knows this and is taking full advantage of it for their own benefit. They're purposely showing things to people that they know will get them riled up so they will comment and spend more time on the site. That's just unethical. It will not get better as long as current management and thinking is leading Facebook.