I'd go further and say it's less obnoxious than the alternatives thus far. It has always bothered me for example, having to enter into some weird murky relation

I'd go further and say it's less obnoxious than the alternatives thus far. It has always bothered me for example, having to enter into some weird murky relationship with a private company as a third party, in my communication with the government. (That's also true for the categorically similar but unrelated outrage of a few years back where you could get a better response from some agencies by engaging them on Twitter than you could through their actual communication channels.) And say what you will, the piece of paper doesn't try to "cleverly" redirect me to some irrelevant paid service. It has no functionality. I'm the one with all the functionality. And just to amplify your point about how it's free - Yeah there's no way I'm ever paying one red goddamn cent for any of this; I'm already paying the taxes!