[closeparen]

>Instead of Facebook, participate in independent online communities around your interests (for example, forums).

Replacing your actual social network with anonymous internet strangers leaves you in a much worse position on the axes on which people usually criticize Facebook. Facebook may be a poor substitute for meatspace interaction with your actual community, but your connecting with your actual community is surely more important than connecting with internet strangers.

>Instead of chat apps that attempt to envelop everyone you've ever met into monolithic walled gardens, use SMS and email.

SMS is a spectacularly low-quality monolithic walled garden. Email is federated in theory but in practice is almost always Google. Both systems have the uniquely privacy-hostile property of being in cleartext by default and in the overwhelming majority of real-world usage.

[JoshMnem]

I was an adult before most people were on the Internet. People don't need sites like Facebook to connect with their communities.

Strangers are only strangers until you start communicating with them. Most people I know these days were first met through the Internet.

I suspect that most people use webmail (HTTPS), and many people don't use Gmail. I can switch my number to another carrier and people can still reach me at the same number, so it isn't exactly a walled garden. I think it's a stretch to argue that Facebook is better than email from a privacy standpoint.

[dTal]

>SMS is a spectacularly low-quality monolithic walled garden

How do you figure? I can communicate with SMS to anyone in the world, on any mobile provider. Seems pretty federated to me.

[closeparen]

Ever tried to get an SS7 connection?

Sure, you can rent access from Twilio, in the same way that you can rent access from Facebook. It’s extremely unlikely that you could ever become a full participant in either network.

[dTal]

Okay, so there's a high barrier to entry. It's pretty hard to become an ISP too. That doesn't make either a walled garden.

It's not so much about whether I personally could federate with the network, as it is about whether some reasonably large number of other entities could. I don't have exact numbers, but it seems there are 1000+ phone providers worldwide.

[JoshMnem]

SMS isn't perfect, but it isn't really comparable to Facebook's chains.