[rizzin]

Could it be an issue local to your school / university? Frankly, I can understand many institutions using those services simply because they actually do provide convenience.

I live in Korea and haven't really noticed anything like the "have a gmail account or be excluded from life" dichotomy you have described. Not sure what "upvoting a president e-petition" is, but you don't need neither FB nor Google for voting in elections.

[pcr910303]

While the Google Classroom thing is local to our school, the general expectation that everyone has an gmail account is present and real, as far as I experienced. For example, the reason why I made a Google account was because one of my academies was only willing to share videos with Google Drive. Also, most of my friends (even ones that are aware of this kind of problems) have a Google account for similar reasons :-( I think it’s partially due to the fast spread of Android smartphones (and it’s high market share) circa 2010 ~ 2012 when you were mandated to make a Gmail account to download apps from the Play store.

While off topic, the e-petition I said about is actually pretty popular, after the new government came in in 2017. (I’m talking about “국민청원”, if you read Korean.) To express your opinion, you need a Google/FB account.