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Comment by clnq | Hacker News Reader

I am always unconvinced by the argument that one can’t leave social media because their friends are on some site.

No one I know does not check their SMS and email, and doesn’t pick up phone calls.

I’ve not been on social media for about 5 years now, and I have not fallen out of touch with a single friend because of that. For other reasons like moving away physically or not gaming as much anymore, but not for this. Everyone still picks up my calls and reads my messages.

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Not being contactable the same place all group stuff is organized or info distributed is either asking others to do work for you (to send you info everyone else got automatically) or means you’re opting to exclude yourself from those activities and discussions.

Less relevant if your friend/family circle doesn’t organize group activities or chat as a group often, I guess.

Who uses facebook groups anymore for things like that? Whenever I get organized info electronically e.g. wedding stuff its an email with a link to a website. Whenever something gets planned among friends its a group text. Whenever any event in town is happening and they put up a flyer about it, there will be a QR scan to a purpose built website.

Sure, we use group WhatsApp, not facebook (we’d still be on sms if not for media sharing and group management sucking on there) but that gets similar complaints from privacy-conscious geeks. Point is, if you refuse to use what other people are using to communicate, it either puts a burden on others or means you miss stuff (or probably some mix of both). That’s why people say they can’t abandon whichever platform or platforms are central for their various social groups.

I don't think it's less work with the new, Whatsapp-based way of organising group events. It seems to be more stressful and distracting to all involved. Your friends shoud appreciate the lack of an extra set of dings in a group chat, and gladly let you know about upcoming events where your presence is desired.

Yes, you would ask a friend to send you a meeting time and place. This is a non-problem to my mind.

This realistically. This is why I can't leave Facebook. There is no platform that all of my friends have some kind of presence on. Some of us have discord. Some us use whatapp. Some of us use $platform, but Facebook is the only one that all of use have at least a login to. There are like 100 of us. I don't know all of them, but my friends want to invite people I don't know and I invite people they don't know and here we are in our 30s still stuck on this situation for big get togethers. Email and text just doesn't work. I don't have have the emails and honestly I'm not all that interested in my friend's sister in law's contact information. This is how Facebook has chained me to it. The network effect is real when you need to keep 2nd and 3rd degree friends in the loop. I can't leave because of people I don't even know.

> email

facebook/nextdoor/discord send me vague "you missed a message/notification" email spam all the time, and it's never been worth my time to actually visit the app/website to see what they're notifying me. Slack and github, on the other hand, send me the actual message so I don't have to open a huge app and navigate tons of BS just to see it's somebody saying "LOL!", and 99% of the time it's something I'm actually involved in or interested or subscribed to.

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