It's also often the only place to find local information even if you do have affordable internet. Especially in smaller counties and towns. Someone might show up in the count, but it doesn't mean a strong attachment.
Yes, the public internet is very close to nil outside the big countries, it's very noticeable nowadays doing verbatim searches on google for the last X time period, and setting the location to some random country.
Public / private and walled garden are not what you are saying.
I'm saying only your friends on Facebook will see your posts, so it is private, unlike twitter where the whole world will see them. And you can create groups if you want to have even more private discussions.
Twitter, LinkedIn are walled gardens, but public ones. Facebook is a private walled garden.
Yes, but "friend" has quite a wide meaning on Facebook.
Compare it to a WhatsApp group: there one defines exactly the people who should see a given message. "Friends" becomes mixed between "true" friends, neighbors, colleagues, ... people you once we're closer with but passed ways to some degree, ... after a while it's semi-public at least unless you have a strict (un-)friending policy. For average users the visibility is also hard to understand.
yes thanks for clarifying that. I really do mean, private as in, no one outside of your circles of real connections can see it and it's entirely invite only. Who do I invite into my home and personal conversations? Well not the people on facebook or twitter I'll tell you that much.
For hundreds of millions in other countries, FB is the internet because it's cheaper than...the internet.