[throwanem]

It's sticky. People do forget. I've seen it happen too, when everyone I knew got on Facebook and I didn't. Over the course of a year or so, people just gradually stopped returning emails, texts, and calls. And Facebook event planning meant I never even found out about stuff until long after it happened, as for example with the two weddings I wasn't invited to because people used their Facebook friends lists as the only input to their invitation lists. They apologized when I ran into them after the fact, but they didn't change their behavior.

I don't blame them, because Facebook is designed to modify human behavior in exactly this manner. You can be present on the platform to have revenue extracted from your social life, or you can be punished as a means of encouraging you to get on the platform so revenue can be extracted from your social life.

Whether anyone intends this dichotomy is irrelevant. The purpose of a system is what it does. And this is what Facebook does.

[landryraccoon]

I hate to tell you this but those people aren't your friends.

I have plenty of friends. What's more, I know they're real.

I mean, how real are your friendships if they won't respond to an occasional text? What even does friendship mean then?

[throwanem]

These were the people who rallied around to help me start recovering from a decade-long abusive relationship, once I finally wised up and got out. Maybe that by you doesn't qualify as friendship. I don't care what does.

[landryraccoon]

And those same people wouldn't answer a text message or pick up the phone if you called them?

[throwanem]

Yeah, that checks out - some variety of this line of questioning plays out every time I have this conversation, so it's just about time you got here. Let's see if we can save some time here:

"Your friends must be terrible people!" - no, as we've already covered, they're not. They helped get me through some rough times. Terrible people, and I've known my share, don't bother.

"Well, then, you must be a terrible person!" - if that were the case, the apologies I got wouldn't have happened, much less been heartfelt. They weren't snubbing me on purpose, or deliberately cutting me out. I've seen my share of that, too, from both sides. This wasn't it.

"Well, then, what you're saying just doesn't make sense!" - sure it does. We're all busy professionals, no longer young, many with young families, all with significant demands on our time and mental energy. People drift apart, it happens. That's probably what it looked like, from the perspective of people on Facebook: me drifting apart from them. In a sense, I suppose it's even true.

Just that it didn't happen that way because I wanted it to, or because they wanted it to, but rather because Facebook wanted it to. Because as you grow ever more accustomed to communicating with everyone you know via Facebook, it gets ever easier just not to think particularly about communicating with anyone any other way.

There's an activation energy barrier to everything, not just to joining the mailing list for some SaaS startup. The more you get habituated to Facebook, the higher that barrier gets with everything else by comparison.

And eventually you get tired of feeling like you're carrying the relationship, and tired of feeling stung by hearing after the fact about another fun camping trip or dinner or wedding that you didn't get an invite to because the whole thing was planned on Facebook. Eventually you just give up, and maybe it takes a few years to realize that you weren't at fault, and neither were your friends. You both got screwed out of each other's company by a machine that is designed to do exactly that, because it can't make money from social interactions that occur outside its hegemony.

That's that punishment I was talking about. It isn't a metaphor. It is a consequence imposed by design to convince Facebook abstainers to do otherwise.

And to forestall your next objection, no, I don't think anyone sat down and planned it that way - probably not, anyhow; I don't put much past Silicon Valley, these days. But even if it's an emergent property rather than an intentional one, that's still no excuse. The purpose of a system is what it does. And this, again, is what Facebook does.

Anything else?

[klingonopera]

Thank you for taking the time to write all that down. I fully agree with most of it.

I tried quitting Facebook, WhatsApp, and whatnot, to no avail. It just doesn't work out like that for me.

I'm born to expatriate parents in some country my Dad was working at the time. Half of my relatives presently live more than 10,000 km away from me, the other half are spread about in all of Germany. I was at two international schools, and a local German school. From the former, my friends are spread out all over the world. From the latter, all around Germany, and some around the world. I presently live and work here in Germany, but I'm sure, if I ever leave for another country, that something like Facebook will become even less expendable. I'm grateful for social media, but I am indeed annoyed that Facebook's the one that has prevailed (so far).

My best friends are the ones I text and call and hang out with. The others, who don't get that privilege, we're both glad to be able to see what the other is doing, without having to engage in direct contact. It doesn't make that form of communication less valuable, because in fact, it adds another dimension to it, increasing the total (social) value.

If all your friends are like Elliot Alderson, sure, I bet you don't need Facebook or any social media. But I also have a ton of friends and relatives who I'd honestly describe as "IT-handicapped", that wouldn't be able to make a change away from Facebook. And these people for one do not understand why Facebook is so bad, and are also too numerous to "convert" away from it, and second, I also don't want to be the "Messiah" to do that.

It thus makes more sense to "convert" Facebook. It may be a privately owned company, but if not already, the data we leave there belongs to us (maybe not in the US, but the EU appears to be trying to head into that direction) and so we should also have a say in that.

And, most of all, I want interoperability.

[Evidlo]

What about just using Facebook for its chat features and ignoring the timeline altogether?

I use this even on desktop: http://m.facebook.com/messages

Alternatively you could bridge to Facebook from some more open system like Matrix or Bitlbee.

[landryraccoon]

It makes perfect sense. You also just confirmed with me that I never want to return to Facebook.

I don't need that website to have that much control over my life and my social relationships. It just doesn't make sense to me, but I'm glad it worked out for you.

[throwanem]

What in that comment led you to believe I ended up getting on Facebook? Serious question; I didn't feel like I needed to explicitly make the point that I didn't, haven't, and won't, and that as far as I'm concerned, the only thing Facebook is good for is killing it with an axe. But by your response I get the sense I failed to make that clear.