op: "I don't care about thing X disappearing"
re: "While you may not care about it because of Y, X also provides benefit Z to other people"
op: "But would there be any drawbacks?"
yeah, there would be drawbacks, other people would lose Z, which may matter a lot of them even if it doesn't matter to you. Someone just told you about Z, and you just responded as if you weren't just told about Z"These days I find it incredibly frustrating to deal with people who have conclusively decided they don't like something and that renders them incapable of acknowledging other benefits that said thing provides even if those benefits aren't relevant to them or are less relevant than the things they vocalize caring about.
I'd like to explicitly note that the parent post did not say "X also provides benefit Z to other people" - it asserted "Facebook is an unparalleled titan in the realm of advertising" which is a substantially different thing; it's not something that some people simply don't care about and a benefit to some other people and considering those statements as equivalent is a (very large) intentional blindspot. The current way of how advertising is done (driven, in part, by FB) is also a harm to many people and society at large, so publicly making an implicit assumption that "advertising" is at most neutral is not okay, it's something that should be called out.
This very "unparalleled titan in the realm of advertising" aspect is a major cost on society, a net harm that perhaps should be tolerated if it's outweighed by some other benefits FB provides (such as the "utility-level communication system for a big chunk of the globe"), but as itself it's definitely not something that should be treated as benign just because some people get paid for it.
If FB advertising disappeared with no other drawbacks, that would be a great thing. Of course, there are some actual drawbacks, but even so it's quite reasonable to motivate people to ask about the actual drawbacks of FB being down, because "oh but ads" (with which the grandparent post started) is not one.
Obvious I'm not serious, and it's popular sentiment here that "Fuck Facebook... Oh but I use Instragram and WhatsApp of course!", but the point was "some people making a living on x" isn't really a great argument for "x is harmful and we might be better without it".
There is a gap between "I want to know what people I know are up to" and "I want to meet with those people one by one to see what they are up to". Some people just want to passively watch and that is ok.
And this is the culprit for loneliness.
Occasionally, I'll see/hear/do something and think that it would have made a good status update/tweet, but then I remember that these things have happened to me for decade before social media was a thing and life was fine. Some I'll share with my wife or a friend, most just disappear and that's fine too.
Why did you put up with racist and misogynistic people on your feed? Why did you feel the need to delete your account instead of unfollowing people?
My feed is nice and clean, with family, some friends, and some pages.