Guilt is a strong motivator, as least for me, so granting someone that access makes it a lot more difficult to set appropriate boundaries.

When I was a kid, long before Facebook, my mom would frequently receive an anonymous chain letter in the mail.

The letter would have some dramatic emotional appeal, or it would claim to be raising money for a poor family in the church, or it would promise pyramid riches, or it might have some mystical mumbo jumbo warning about breaking the chain.

But in the end, the stories about heartbreak or helping people or mysterious calamities were complete horseshit. Their only purpose was to convince my mom to copy the letter and send it to 12 other people, thus expanding the base of the pyramid for the benefit of whoever started the chain letter.

Facebook is the modern chain letter.

Just like chain letters, Facebook has lots of horseshit stories about connecting people, with implied mysterious social consequences for not participating.

But underneath all that, the real purpose of Facebook is to amplify social pressure to get people to expand the base of the pyramid for Facebook's benefit.

Although FB software doesn’t “force” any connection, as the comment above so well illustrates, there can be incredible social pressure enabled by FB to do something such as stay connected to an abuser.

If you consider FB to be literally the software only, rather than the software plus community, then you may be technically correct. This IMO is a narrow and limited view of what companies and products are.

To me there is a clear and significant difference between "pressuring" someone and "forcing" someone, and I'm honestly a bit baffled by why this simple (to me) and small point seems controversial in the subthread anchored in the grandparent comment.

How did Facebook force them to add those people as friends?

No, facebook the company did not force them at gunpoint to add their parents. That's correct. There are degrees of pressure, yes? If someone found them too much to put up with, is it unreasonable to accept the term 'forced' as apropos?

[EDIT: to the people downvoting this, the subtleties of language matter. There is a big and specific difference between concepts like "encouraged", "presssured" and "forced"]

The definition I cited was for illustration. Since when does backing up you point with a definition mean you're being slavishly robotic?

Since you're trying to imply my usage of the term is narrow and unrealistic, what's the different notion of "forcing" someone to do something that would make it true that Facebook is forcing people to friend others that they otherwise wouldn't want to?

From a Facebook designer's point of view, the UI/UX most surely is intended to be "encouraging". But it may also be the case that for some users, the social dynamic may feel particularly oppressive.

I'm explicitly stating.

So perhaps loosen your grip and understand what the OP was saying?