[wmeredith]

This argument basically boils down to "everyone else is doing it". That's nuts. This is no reason to keep doing something against your own self-interest. Replace the word Facebook with texting while driving and reread your comment.

[fennecfoxen]

"Texting while driving" has a simple, safe, more-or-less equivalent substitute: texting while not driving. Facebook, insofar as it is a widely-adopted and community-preferred communications tool, does not: network effects and all that.

[pirateking]

Actually it does. The more or less equivalent substitute to "communicating on the internet with Facebook" is "communicating on the internet without Facebook".

Facebook is a subset of Internet communication just as driving is a subset of texting scenarios.

[BHSPitMonkey]

So you're asking people to beseech their friends to adopt regular usage of some alternative to Facebook (email, Jabber, Google, etc.) solely so that they can stay in contact. That's equivalent to asking someone "could you please go to my blog regularly to see if I have anything to say to you?".

[pirateking]

I am not asking anyone to do anything. I am just saying that it is possible to communicate outside of Facebook. The choice of tools and exercise of free will that make it a realistic possibility for each individual is up to them.

The idea here is not simply about using an existing alternative network. The idea is that creating an alternative network is always a possibility, and that free will exists.

The "network effect", while a real observable phenomenon, is still a flawed rationalization for the existence of a network, and undermines that thing which actually propagates the network - the free will of the individual.

[fennecfoxen]

The difference is that you can reach the exact same people paying the exact same amount of attention to the exact same channels by choosing texting-at-rest over while-driving.