[icebraining]

I hardly use the site to socialize with my family and old friends - it's basically a glorified message board.

That's the annoying thing. We already had message boards! Except they were decentralized, you could register anonymously and the administrators often had more autonomy (e.g. not put up ads and tracking scripts). Now Facebook has eaten a bunch of that market, and so we're forced to choose between giving up those communities or submitting to the Borg. It's annoying as hell.