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Comment by jasonlfunk | Hacker News Reader

Nonsense. Why should the government ban Facebook? Unlike a lot of industries that consumers must use, Facebook is 100% optional. If you don't like what Facebook does, close your account and tell your friends to do the same. But if others want to use the services that Facebook offers, who are you to tell them that they can't?

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Because Facebook also harms non-users. It's worse than 2nd hand smoke. It's like the drug and the junkie at the same time. It's the drug to the users, but then it's the junkie that steals things from others to continue its habit to survive.

You must have drank some serious kool aid if you think that Facebook is worse than second hand smoke.

One of those can actually kill you.

I agree - passive smoking poses a much bigger and more direct threat to our health than Facebook, obviously - but Facebook is much more insidious, since at the very least you can stay away from smokers, and at least the dangers of smoking are well-known, but there is no escaping Facebook, and most people think it to be harmless.

But at some point, it becomes a basic requirement to participate in society, and that gives the people who want out an impossible choice, not by any virtue of the platform, but by the platform hijacking the virtue of society.[0]

[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eG0KrT6pBPk "Changing threats to privacy"

So is using crack cocaine and meth. And somehow we chose to ban their use. And probably should tell our friends be highly suspicious of using them. This is age old conversation about how much government should protect people from themselves.

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