[ben_w]

> To be clear, these multi billion/trillion dollar companies don't need anyone defending them. However, it would be interesting to see what the EU's position would be if Meta started as an EU company.

I absolutely agree on this point. I do have the… bias, that in my formative years Apple was very much the plucky underdog in danger of bankruptcy.

This may be why I am less concerned about what Apple does. I am aware that, net, most people here very much disagree with my position that if you don't like Apple's software policies, you can simply not buy their hardware. (Indeed, they are priced such that many people who would actually like to have those things, cannot afford them).

Google and Facebook, however, are much harder to avoid — yes, you can in theory replace Gmail with Yahoo, Google.com with DuckDuckGo.com, Google Maps with OpenStreetMap, but people who try this report that it's harder than it seems to totally cut that particular cord.

Facebook Messenger is my only way to remain in contact with some people. I've stopped logging into the main site because their feed is, approximately: [real post from an actual connection but 75% chance I've already seen it on a previous visit, advert, list of people it thinks I might know but I don't, then a repeating pattern of {advert, 3 example posts from a group it thinks I might want to join but don't}].

But yeah, Apple aren't the plucky underdog any more.

[ryandrake]

> Facebook Messenger is my only way to remain in contact with some people.

This is always an exaggeration. You mean to tell me there are people out there for whom the only way to get in touch with them is through Facebook? They don't have a phone number, SMS, an E-mail address (note you need an E-mail address to sign up for Facebook in the first place), a postal address, and ears for word of mouth conversation?

I found Facebook to be the easiest company to voluntarily avoid. One day, about ten years ago, I simply changed my password to a random string and threw it away, and that was it. It was scary at first (FOMO) but ultimately it didn't even slightly affect my social life or ability to keep in contact with people. I told everyone what I was doing and that I would not be accessing the company's products anymore, and we just switched over to other means of communication. No big deal.

[ben_w]

> This is always an exaggeration. You mean to tell me there are people out there for whom the only way to get in touch with them is through Facebook? They don't have a phone number, SMS, an E-mail address (note you need an E-mail address to sign up for Facebook in the first place), a postal address, and ears for word of mouth conversation?

Yup.

Three people in particular come to mind. For them, with regard to phone/SMS/e-mail, even though they necessarily have those things, they never bothered to give them to me, and/or they change them often, and/or they don't check those modes.

For postal address… these three regularly (and from my perspective randomly) change continents, not merely street or city. One of the countries they often go to is Kenya, where the addresses of the places they live in seem to often be something of the form "third on the left in the gated community next to the Blue Sky Petrol Station".

This also makes "ears and mouth" rather challenging.

Extra irony points, they all self-identify as somewhere between socialist and communist. And still insist on using Facebook.

[seec]

If all of that is true, I don't see why you would bother keeping in contact with them. At some point if someone makes it so hard to be contacted it sends a message that he doesn't want to be contacted.

On top of that, I know some people like that and I think there is an ambivalence about them, a form of intellectual dishonesty that makes it not very worthwhile to frequent them. You can have fun at parties with them but that's pretty much the extent of the relationship a self-respecting person should allow.

But we all know that's not the actual reason you keep a Facebook account, because that's technically bullshit in the first place. If you don't change your stuff, they have a way to contact you and that's all that's needed.

[ben_w]

> If all of that is true, I don't see why you would bother keeping in contact with them. At some point if someone makes it so hard to be contacted it sends a message that he doesn't want to be contacted.

Because FB messenger isn't that painful. Facebook the news-feed is, and if they only used that then I would indeed not bother, but the messenger app isn't.

Well, not yet, anyway. Ads creeping in, a "stories" tab I can't get rid of. I may drop it eventually, but today it has a monopoly on my connection with them, and I'm using it because it's less painful than losing touch.

> But we all know that's not the actual reason you keep a Facebook account, because that's technically bullshit in the first place. If you don't change your stuff, they have a way to contact you and that's all that's needed.

Just because I'm technically apt, doesn't mean everyone else is, or cares. Back when they were still around, I had to turn on "parental controls" to stop my dad from accidentally moving apps out of the dock and losing them (as in couldn't find, not deleted), and he needed me to write down instructions for him to be able to use webmail (and he forgot that his password was "XXXX", so complained that the instructions had a placeholder and I had to explain no, that's what your password actually is). One time my mum asked me to change her password by sending me a postcard with the desired new one written on it. My gran held the mouse rotated 90° and didn't know why it wasn't working.