That's a short-sighted statement. On a personal level, I completely agree with you. Facebook is a giant waste of time for the typical user and a big +1 for your life if you ditch it. For many business, however, it's critical. My local Snap-on Tools dealer uses it to announce where his truck will be each day and what tools and equipment he's running on special. He hates Facebook but told me the other day that he conducted almost a million dollars in business using the platform in 2020. Sure, he could kill it or switch to MeWe, but that would significantly hurt his exposure to his customers, who use it regularly.

Have you considered asking him to cross-post to a Telegram group or similar? While it's imperfect:

* It can still be bridged to Matrix, ensuring you don't have to use Telegram if you don't want to

* There are open-source Telegram clients (at least for Android)

* It doesn't sound like too much more effort: One extra message weekly (for sales), and one extra message daily (truck location)

* Using one doesn't preclude you from using the other - you don't reduce his exposure or sales, and help him reach customers who hate FB as much as your Snap-On dealer.

* It reduces everyone's dependence on Facebook

All that said, my Snap-On dealer just has his cell number available, and follows a predictable route - we know he stops by every other Monday, and we can text him if we need something swapped out. It works for us, but I won't pretend to know your guys business better than him.

A lot of businesses in the developing world just use messaging apps for effectively the same purpose. You don't need FB.

And the messaging app they often use belongs to FB.

And just recently made a change to pipe all that data back into Facebook haha

I'm already seeing businesses start to switch to Signal.

I run a business and don’t use Facebook. It’s not necessary.

I deleted my Facebook in July 2019 and my business still runs. So, for me, it was neither water nor air.

I am not so sure about candidates for public offices, though. Especially in majority voting systems. Not having a social network presence may be crippling for their electability.

It depends on your location and market.

Businesses just like fb so they can post stuff and pretend they aren't attention whoring.

Phones, like food and water, are considered "essential" by the US government and provided for free to citizens who can't afford them. The definition of "essential" grows every year. AFAICT you need a FB account to apply for a job at FB and to look up some business' address.

FB is not a phone, it's a website that you don't have to visit.

A website containing the only copy in the world of a lot of information that Facebook has no real right to monopolise.

None of that information is "necessary" though otherwise I would be dead. Painting Facebook as some kind of loft extension built on top of Maslow's hierarchy of needs is disingenuous at best and propaganda at worst. I've lived happily without Facebook for many years, not using it has had zero impact on my life. Not zero _meaningful_ impact, but _zero_ impact. Facebook is NOT a necessity.

You're conflating monopoly with popularity. Take it up with the individuals that willingly put their information in there, nobody is forcing them to do that.

I applaud you on a moral level, but I hope you realize how wrong you are on a practical level. Being connected to the pulse of the world comes with very powerful pros (meeting a partner, finding a job) and cons (disinformation, social pressures). Comparing it to essential oils is wrong.

Also, the Facebook story isn't finished yet. Is it really that far-fetched to believe that their influence over our lives could 10x over the next 50 years? I hope it won't, but I wouldn't be willing to put my money on it. So keeping in mind that the context of this thread is about getting permanently banned on Facebook, for anyone who thinks that might have zero impact on them, I would suggest you still keep a foot in the door in case you change your mind down the road.

To be fair nothing is really "necessary" beyond a 8' x 6' cell, potable water, and a crate full of Huel or something but no sane person outside of those who actively seek an ascetic lifestyle would actually want to live like that.

Just because something isn't strictly necessary doesn't mean that life can't become difficult without it. The sad fact of the matter is that by cutting off Facebook you're also cutting off the primary way of staying in touch with some people along with things like events and so on. Yes there are workarounds, of course there is but the vast majority of people don't care and can't be convinced to care about the politics and social effects of Facebook's dominant position.

The number of organizations that have given up other means of organizing for FB groups is, well, far too many. With Yahoo Groups gone and Google Groups having the Sword of Damocles hanging over it (not to mention the issues average folks have with using email discussion lists and their effective deprecation by anti-spam measures), FB groups looks like an easy option to people, and suddenly to participate in an activity you need a FB account, or a very communicative friend with one.

I can give my personal example of how facebook is literally a life-saver for me, and I'm sure there are many others.

I'm strongly passionate about rock climbing, and try to structure my life around it as my primary form of recreation. If I'm traveling for leisure, climbing is a big part of the agenda. There are many communities for finding people to climb with on Facebook, and I've used them extensively.

Without facebook, I'd more often have to resort to self-belaying, which is much more dangerous (among other reasons, if you're knocked unconscious there's no one to start a rescue or call for help). Having access to the various regional climbing groups on facebook has put me in touch with so many people, so I have only had to do that on a handful of occasions.

There are other examples I can think of, even if none of them have been so drastic. But without access to Facebook, many people would have their lives seriously impacted, and possible lack of access to life-saving resources.

At least in my country/city, you MUST publish your events on Facebook to get an audience. Even I keep a Facebook account just because it's the only place that has every single event happening in my city. Before COVID I would always open Facebook's event calendar before a night out to check out what concerts/parties are happening that night.

Facebook is used as an identity provider. Are users allowed to continue that service when their accounts are disabled?

They can use other identity providers.

Hey, can you move this account over to this identity provider, please? No, I can't prove I own the account, but… Hello? Hello?

Yes, it's a footgun. Don't even start using FB as an identity provider.

What do you propose instead? And before you answer, consider that many systems only let you sign in with Facebook or Google.

Can you name some of them? All apps/services I've used always had some way of register account with email. Granted, this option is sometimes "de-prioritized" (displayed less prominently).

Advent of Code only permits GitHub, Google, Twitter and Reddit, despite using OAuth.

Well I think Google is a better choice than FB, but I can't think of any services I use where one or both of those are the only options and email signup isn't.

The only one that comes to mind (and that annoyed me the other day) is ProductHunt, which has 4 options for signup, but not email.

Please tell me you understand the difficulty of such an action if your attached identity to a site is inaccessible to you.

Facebook has complete monopoly for online sales where I live (no ecommerce platform is well developed), and thus getting cut from Facebook will probably mean you are no longer in the business.

Also as a buyer, I have to use my mother or friend Facebook account to find items or contact sellers.

> I find the idea of Facebook being "necessary" for anyone quite spectacularly laughable.

Facebook may not be necessary, but there is a very high probability it is the only social medium that the majority of your acquaintances & relatives use.

Being forcibly disconnected from humanity is extremely isolating & harsh.

You're not disconnected from humanity. You can still call people, text them, message them on Whatsapp, meet them in person (maybe not as easily these days)

It's not like leaving Facebook turns you into a hermit. If it does, then maybe it's time to find a new group of friends.

These people are attempting to actively share their status, are broadcasting their lives. But the medium has cut you the receiver off. This is an obvious & horrific & disconmect.

Even if I did have contact info for a thousand people & kept a schedule, maintained contact on a 1:1 basis, took the time to inform myself of people's lives, isn't it a bit rude & disrespectful, an ineffective use of other people's time, to make them recount toe personally what's going on, what's happened to them? Literally call them up & ask them to repeat the events of their social media deed for the past month? Oh and read me peoplecs tries too. Who "loved" that status update? Can you send those pictures? The asks, the wastes of time, to get anything resbling the faintest hint of parity, are practically endless.

This is just blindingly blaringly obviously unacceptable in every way. Facebook's monopoly on mainstream people-you-know social media has ipso facto come to be humanities warm glow, the fire we gather by. Getting dropped out of the exchanges & chatter of humanity is a cruel & bitter fate, a shocking act.

The melodrama in this comment reads like Stockholm syndrome. Honestly mate, it’s not that bad. Give it a go, try not using it for a week. Humans managed for thousands of years without knowing what great Aunt Flo thinks of immigrants or 5G every waking second. You don’t need your life validated by someone liking your posts, there’s real life ways of finding actual meaning in your actions.

I haven't used Facebook for >2 years. I find it super boring, don't have many active friends there. But I see relatives who use it regularly, for whom Facebook is quite near to being their complete access to the world, their world.

Your poo-poo'ing dismissal of access to the locked-on standard of sharing life events & baby photos seems so heartless to me. You don't seem to be willing to budge, to show an iota of sympathy for people's use, any willingness to acknowledge that this monopoly of broadcast human connection (& replies) is such an overwhelming monopoly because it works, because it has suceeded, because it is efficient & useful. It is that way because everyone is there. It's won because it came out on top, because metcalf's rule is true; the value of a network is (exponentially at first, sigmoiding eventually to 1, a fully connected universe) proportional to the amount of nodes and connections on it.

Being denied the ability to not only write but to read too to the world's one and only mass human network is unbearably cruel. You should show some sympathy. I agree that life can be pretty good without it, that we can cut loose a lot of the ambient connections we otherwise would never keep. But that ability to connect, to humanize at such a massively larger scale than was possible before is, to me, absolute magical & I love those who do use it well.

I just wish it wasn't a monopoly, mostly. This connectivity is too vital, too good to be Facebook's & Facebook's alone.

I agree with you, these online social connections have become even more valuable in the times of pandemic. It is cruel specially for older generation where their only contact with the family has been fb, it's kinda sad that it happened, their dark patterns, unethical business deals has been screwing people for years and no one seems to see it.

Please stop telling people how they should connect with their lives ones. It's obnoxious and it lowers your reputation.

In certain areas it actually is essential for small businesses (or so they think). Consider that such small shop owners would say they're even saving money by not having their own webpage because it's expensive compared to FB page.

It's not black and white. For some, Facebook is indeed a necessity and for others, not. If you're a private individual, you're probably on the lower side of "I need Facebook" but if you're a business today, it's hard to compete with others who do have a good social media presence on Facebook and Instagram (depends on the business) if you get banned and cannot use either.