[em-bee]

that's what i meant by peer pressure. it is not corporate manipulation that drives me to use facebook, but the need to stay in touch with friends and family. or at least it's not direct corporate manipulation. for comparison, i can easily avoid google, because apart from google+ and hangouts nothing on google is used to talk to other people (and gmail still uses an open protocol)

so googles manipulation leaves me cold, while facebook manages to reach me through my peers.

and it's not just pressure in the form of: if you don't have that you are not cool, but if you don't have it we will not be able to stay in touch.

only as a group we can resist that and switch to alternative ways to communicate. i have actually managed to resist facebook and twitter (but i use others that i'd rather avoid if i could). the only long term friend i am still in touch with is one who runs his own private weblog. i am pretty sure i could find others on facebook if i decided to look.