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The analogy that comes to my mind is as if all of my friends and family and customers and employers did heroin. Yes, I could choose not to do heroin, and yet, s

The analogy that comes to my mind is as if all of my friends and family and customers and employers did heroin. Yes, I could choose not to do heroin, and yet, staying around those people, the likelihood of me continuing to use heroin is high (pun intended) so I could continue to fit in. One of the best ways to stop using heroin is to disconnect from those friends and family. So yes, they may be completely-optional-to-my-life in terms of using it directly, and yet choosing to not use them often means disconnecting from people not just on those platforms but in life in general. An example that's almost the opposite: I traveled a lot overseas and my close group of American friends would use an SMS chat group to stay in touch. While overseas, I'd use a local sim and couldn't receive the group texts. I wanted them to switch to Whatsapp or a similar platform that would work over the internet. A few of them refused. So they stayed on the platform and I felt myself becoming more distant from them, not just in texts but in general. I felt a very similar disconnect after I deleted my FB account a few years back, and then again, after I built a new FB account and muted all of my FB friends. At some point, I think a company becomes so large and integrated into society that it becomes a pseudo-monopoly and often in the US we treat those as public utilities. Yes, I think I could live without electricity in my city, and yet the electric company would still impact my life.

TameAntelope 5y ago
Facebook is not as bad as heroin. Facebook is not as necessary as electricity. It's insane to me that this is where we are in the discourse, that those are the analogies being used to describe one of dozens of ways to communicate with others. The sad reality is that if it weren't Facebook, it'd be Twitter. If it weren't Twitter, it'd be TikTok, and so on. The people you're mad at aren't the companies making it easier to communicate, it's the people doing the communicating, and they're doing the communicating on whatever platform becomes most popular. You may be mad at the users for not... I dunno, saying better things on these platforms, and you're seemingly taking it out on the platform. You're mad at society, and you channel it through to the services that society uses. Facebook is not causing any of the problems you're upset about, it's just the platform where those problems are manifesting. It's still just a product, and if something better comes along, people will switch to the better thing. Network effects are real, but they're not permanent or impenetrable.
- whymauri 5y ago
  >Facebook is not as necessary as electricity. It's insane to me that this is where we are in the discourse, that those are the analogies being used to describe one of dozens of ways to communicate with others. Once again, this is a very Western-centric point of view.
  - TameAntelope 5y ago
    No, Facebook/WhatsApp is a choice various countries and cultures made, and that choice can be unmade. You can't un-make the choice to adopt electricity, you can make the choice to support Signal or Telegram or MMS or whatever. Again, your complaint is about people. You don't like a choice they made, but it was a choice those people made and continue to make.
    - whymauri 5y ago
      >You can't un-make the choice to adopt electricity, you can make the choice to support Signal or Telegram or MMS or whatever. But... you absolutely can. This is getting pointless. You're not going to be convinced, nor are you willing to engage in any meaningful dialogue here.

TameAntelope 5y ago

Facebook is not as bad as heroin. Facebook is not as necessary as electricity. It's insane to me that this is where we are in the discourse, that those are the analogies being used to describe one of dozens of ways to communicate with others. The sad reality is that if it weren't Facebook, it'd be Twitter. If it weren't Twitter, it'd be TikTok, and so on. The people you're mad at aren't the companies making it easier to communicate, it's the people doing the communicating, and they're doing the communicating on whatever platform becomes most popular. You may be mad at the users for not... I dunno, saying better things on these platforms, and you're seemingly taking it out on the platform. You're mad at society, and you channel it through to the services that society uses. Facebook is not causing any of the problems you're upset about, it's just the platform where those problems are manifesting. It's still just a product, and if something better comes along, people will switch to the better thing. Network effects are real, but they're not permanent or impenetrable.

whymauri 5y ago
>Facebook is not as necessary as electricity. It's insane to me that this is where we are in the discourse, that those are the analogies being used to describe one of dozens of ways to communicate with others. Once again, this is a very Western-centric point of view.
- TameAntelope 5y ago
  No, Facebook/WhatsApp is a choice various countries and cultures made, and that choice can be unmade. You can't un-make the choice to adopt electricity, you can make the choice to support Signal or Telegram or MMS or whatever. Again, your complaint is about people. You don't like a choice they made, but it was a choice those people made and continue to make.
  - whymauri 5y ago
    >You can't un-make the choice to adopt electricity, you can make the choice to support Signal or Telegram or MMS or whatever. But... you absolutely can. This is getting pointless. You're not going to be convinced, nor are you willing to engage in any meaningful dialogue here.