These kind of comments always seem to dismiss the positive value that facebook brings to society.
Very few people call for banning Facebook. What is sought is regulating it, perhaps breaking it up. That seems to quite clearly accept that it has positive value. Just that it is creating tremendous negative value in its current configuration with it present people.
Another positive is my drone hobby has lots of groups on Facebook where members share information and help each other across the globe.
Another positive is that my local buy nothing group helps neighbors out by giving things away for free to neighbors in need.
Almost none of the negatives of Facebook brought up in recent discussions apply to me because I don't go looking for it and if I see them I tell Facebook not to show me things like that and then it doesn't. People act like you can't curate your experience.
I know my wife basically keeps in touch with all of her family through Facebook. I try to avoid that because I've always posted more liberally there, but I connect with all my family (including my 90 year-old grand mother) through whatsapp.
There's a real benefit from having a public registry that everyone signs up to.
Is there? or is there a benefit from having a communications platform that is easy to use.
if there was a public utility that allowed you to contact anyone on the planet and all you needed to know was their userID would that not meet 80% of the functionality without these scathing problems? Maybe you could use some kind of federated system that allowed operators local to each cohort of people to moderate abuse properly.
(I'm joking of course, this is somewhat how the phone system works).
It seems similar to deleting your Facebook account every year.
still i frequently call and get called by people _directly_ (business and personal) and i don't see that changing until neccessitated by latency or bandwidth constraints (eg. interplanetary communication)
facebook is less of a public registry than the phone system thou.
ppl are still exchanging identifiers after meetings
Are you aware that you can take phone numbers with you when you change providers? As for the other point: they're addressable on the entire planet, you can be sure everyone has one and it's not tied to a singular company.
So, while I'm joking about the equivalency, you said that a "registry that everyone on the planet was on" was the value add- I'm suggesting, somewhat tongue-in-cheekly, that we have such a system.
phone number is a username in a worldwide public registry
It makes it easy to stay connected with and re-engage with people in your social group.
It managed the spam problem reasonably well (those Ray Ban scams are a relatively infrequent problem).
It makes to easy to start, run, find, and join niche interest groups. I'm in a dance community that would find it much harder to find each other's events without Facebook Events. My wife is in a vintage community that carries out low-friction international vintage clothing exchanges through Facebook Groups.
There are communities using Facebok to run small businesses and serve their communities.
Oh and I change my phone number when I change phone company because it's easier than not.
Now, I also think there are things wrong with Facebook and with how the network effect impacts on its competition. I think it could use oversight and regulation. But your naysayers are unimaginative children. Of course Facebook provides societal benefits. Get real.
But when those goals have to come at the expense of subversion of democratic institutions (elections of which no fraud can be found) and at the expense of scientific data that is deluding people to think that vaccinations are suspect I'll draw the line. FB does (and enriches itself from) far more damage to society than which it provides.
Nor did Trump win the Electoral College vote, 306 to 232 for Biden[2]
there is a lack of education in the US
On this we agree, but I'm sure in very different regards.
[1] https://www.cfr.org/blog/2020-election-numbers [2] https://www.archives.gov/electoral-college/2020
Edit: (no change) gp changed their comment to shift their point to a different election cycle, big difference.
What does this actually mean? There are plenty of Trump supporters out there with master's degrees. One of the capitol rioters was a GMU grad with a security clearance: https://www.newsweek.com/who-federico-g-klein-state-departme...
Water pipes?
> Removing lead from solders, piezoelectric components etc is truly catastrophic.
Sounds like you're happy turning Facebook into something that consumers don't touch on a daily basis, like piezoelectric components. No complaint here, so you've got a deal!
I switched to lead-free solder for all of my projects and haven't had any problems, let alone a catastropy.