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Comment by carvalho | Hacker News Reader

In Europe there is a mindset that companies can become so big that you can not avoid them anymore. Nobody forces you to use Google or Facebook, but you are put at a disadvantage if you do not use them.

Facebook is not free. You trade your data for usage.

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Google? Maybe. Facebook? I would argue that using Facebook is a net negative and you're at an advantage if you ditch it.

Facebook is used in different markets in different ways. In Japan for example it is a common medium for corporate communication, much like slack.

For uk students Facebook is almost a requirement of the social life. Few people have other contact lists, if you aren't on Facebook you can't be contacted. Event invitation is done through Facebook - the event is rarely advertised elsewhere nor is it a deliberate topic conversation.

The few people I knew who didn't use Facebook at uni ended up using it through others whether they are were willing to admit it or not.

I live at a University in California where I am part-time faculty, and if you don't use Facebook you are essentially screwed: even local government ends up using Facebook as its primary means of disseminating information as literally no on reading uses anything but Facebook for events and the web is sadly dead (it only has meaning if linked to from a Facebook post).

>For uk students Facebook is almost a requirement of the social life.

So, are you telling me that students, people at the stage of life when they are most rebellious, and their minds are most flexible, just won't be able to find any replacement for Facebook, if they wanted to?

(◔_◔)

You've taken something that said 'almost' and taken it to the extremes.

> any replacement for Facebook, if they wanted to

That requires organising several thousand people who don't want to to change platform.

Perform whatever gymnastics you want and break all of the rules - that task ain't getting easier.

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