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No, Facebook and other social media websites do not provide value, they suck up value for the shareholders. Facebook and others like them are a disease, and the

No, Facebook and other social media websites do not provide value, they suck up value for the shareholders. Facebook and others like them are a disease, and they have effectively killed the internet. Your point about being able to show your grandparents pictures totally ignores email and other technologies that “solved” this problem more than a decade before Facebook. Hell, you could create a personal website with password protected pages if you were worried about the public finding certain photos. That’s how the world worked prefacebook, it was wonderful! But instead you are sending those private photos to Facebook, for free! They now own your private photos and will use them against you. Maybe you should have just used email. Of course you can’t monitize free/open, so the money people have convinced you that you need something better than a personal website, or email, or ftp or irc or Usenet or any of the superior technology that existed before the money people killed the internet.

themoat 8y ago
I completely comprehend the bad things the platforms introduce, but pre-social media it was just really inconvenient to stay in touch with people way out of your area. Blogs were alright for it, but not great for 2 way communication in my memories. I stayed in Peru for a couple years pre-facebook. I told friends and my host family I'd stay in touch and we all shared email addresses. I wrote less than 3 emails. Next couple years go by and they start shooting friend requests and suddenly I am interacting with long lost friends, talking about their kids, jobs, and reminiscing about the dumb things we did together. There are definitely other ways to communicate, but there's something about social media that reduces the effort required to connect with someone. It's irrelevant that you might change your address, phone number, or even email address. You have a fixed place that I can contact you and reach out. Oh, and it's the same website where I can find my favorite college roommate too...
- type0 8y ago
  > You have a fixed place that I can contact you and reach out. Oh, and it's the same website where I can find my favorite college roommate too... I thought that too, until I discovered that some of those old friends actually were impersonated and who knows how many identity thefts there are out there.
type0 8y ago
when bluGill writes: "I don't want the world to see pictures of my kids (even though nobody cares it still isn't a good idea), but I do want my parents to see them." - it makes me wonder if this means that kids gave their approval to this and were even able understand the impact on their life when their parents gave away their biometric data to sell for the highest bidder.

themoat 8y ago

I completely comprehend the bad things the platforms introduce, but pre-social media it was just really inconvenient to stay in touch with people way out of your area. Blogs were alright for it, but not great for 2 way communication in my memories. I stayed in Peru for a couple years pre-facebook. I told friends and my host family I'd stay in touch and we all shared email addresses. I wrote less than 3 emails. Next couple years go by and they start shooting friend requests and suddenly I am interacting with long lost friends, talking about their kids, jobs, and reminiscing about the dumb things we did together. There are definitely other ways to communicate, but there's something about social media that reduces the effort required to connect with someone. It's irrelevant that you might change your address, phone number, or even email address. You have a fixed place that I can contact you and reach out. Oh, and it's the same website where I can find my favorite college roommate too...

type0 8y ago
> You have a fixed place that I can contact you and reach out. Oh, and it's the same website where I can find my favorite college roommate too... I thought that too, until I discovered that some of those old friends actually were impersonated and who knows how many identity thefts there are out there.

type0 8y ago

when bluGill writes: "I don't want the world to see pictures of my kids (even though nobody cares it still isn't a good idea), but I do want my parents to see them." - it makes me wonder if this means that kids gave their approval to this and were even able understand the impact on their life when their parents gave away their biometric data to sell for the highest bidder.