I don't want to do victim blaming or shaming here but why would you use any fb product knowing well about their awful business practices like these?

Fair and valid question. I got rid of Facebook over a year ago but still use IG, but I cringe when I do.

Sadly I’m happy I left Facebook but I will admit I’ve missed a lot of news and events in friends personal lives. A good friends mom, whom I was very fond of, passed away and I learned about it months later. Another friend had a fast growing tumor and I missed that news and never got a last phone call with him. Both of which I regret missing out on.

I’ll still maintain I’m happy with my departure, but it has its drawbacks unfortunately.

Double edged sword indeed.

I've been a social media hermit for basically my entire life so far but folded in and installed IG a couple weeks ago once I entered university. It's sadly just the norm. Telling someone my age to "just not use social media" seems like a boomer's shriek, and almost every club or association manages does all its' event coordination and stuff over IG.

It's extremely hard to get by, keep up with people, or even make friends without it.

The same could also be said for Discord as well, which I've seen over the past 4-5 years grow from a gamer-exclusive chat platform to what is probably the #1 choice for students nowadays for group interactions.

As far as we've come though I still think these kinds of things are still in their infancy when it comes to their impact on us as a society, so I guess the best thing to do is just wait and see what happens.

Because of its network effect. Removing facebook, in a way is removing members of our connection circles.

> removing members of our connection circles

Does it really? Whatever happened to just a friendly weekly email?

I'm in my 30s and a friendly email (from a person not relating to business) has never existed in my life haha

Man I'd love it if I could communicate socially via email, nobody I know would go for it

Honest question: have you tried writing first? I communicate with a few people via email every few months. It might start with a forwarded email, or just a quick how-do-you-do, then it deepens into long multi-paragraph replies over the course of days. Being able to sit down to write and rewrite what's been going on without someone watching the little typing bubble means I can get more in-depth with how I've been feeling. I would give it a shot. Try sending people a quick email. If they never reply, no biggie. If they do, you may be surprised at the result.

I would feel kinda silly asking for someone's email address over a chat messenger, but you are correct there's no attempt my side either. "nobody would go for it" is an assumption on my part

I'll make a point to give it a go :)

Let us know how it goes. Our limbic system is more accurate than our perception abilities.

The issue with email is partly a slight inconvenience. Unless you input large content, the UX time overhead is significant enough to prefer IM. EMails has not been designed for frequent back and forth on the same thread even if occasional. From there you loose most people. Email hasn't changed much, from the time we barely had Internet connections, the burden to find a connected client was enough to forgive the UX issue.

Enter email address, autocomplete, type text, click send is enough a deterent for most of us to favor a chat window, type and press enter. And scroll up to see what was communicated prior. Got an image or audio? Drop it in, press enter. You can even record a quick audio message and boom, sent. Email client and protocol simply don't support that. At best you get addons which aren't necessarily supported on the other side.

Openness is the solution, but email protocol doesn't have what is needed for current needs of communication. Corporates building these tools now have the network effect, keeping the crowd in their walled gardens.

I got a reply over FB messenger haha

I have no overlap between people I know IRL and people I know on SM. They are wholly separate worlds. If I know them IRL, it's text and email - never ever SM.

For me, the point of SM is burnable bridges. It's a place to take risks and later apply the lessons to meatspace. In spite of that, I've cultivated many lasting online relationships but I can't see myself ever meeting any of them in person.

SM?

"Social Media", I'm guessing.

I have not received a friendly email in more than a decade. It’s all on social media unless it’s work or spam.

I recently asked a ~20 year old to stay in contact via mail (as I don't have IG or FB) and just got a 'lol'. So this mostly disappeared.

(I have one friend I send mails to occasionally, though)

It got replaced by social media

It did, but did it ever _have_ to be?

Nothing ever _has_ to happen; that implies intent in markets.

Efficiencies and user experience are better for more users on social media than email, despite it's obvious flaws.

Did regional steel mills _have_ to replace local blacksmiths? No, but they did.

If you where sent into the year 2000 with a mission to prevent the adoption of social media and instead maintain Email's dominance, what would you do?

Build an open messaging protocol and decent clients. Oh wait, some did exactly that.

The problem sadly isn't tech related. It's education. Corporates will market to the masses who are mostly tech ignorant, if not politically and economically ignorant too. So even with alternatives, the power of commercial communication is greater than what non profit are able to afford.

We will have to wait for people to suffer further and further, more will open their eyes to it, until radical resistance settles in people's limbic systems. We are getting close I think, I hope.

Nobody checks their email anymore.

Might be an unpopular opinion but if you have a connection that exists only via social media and not at least via phone calling or some other more personal forms of communication too, its not much of a real connection.

I wish I had time to text and call every one of my friends, but sadly I just don't. Facebook is perfect because I can post there and all my friends see it without me having to call or text every one of them the same story.

Then when we do get a chance to meet up, we can skip right to the discussion of the thing instead of me first having to tell the story.

Especially since some of my friends live very far away and have very busy jobs so we only see each other every few years, but this way I can still keep up on their lives and they on mine.

I maintain an account only so nobody can impersonate me to others.

Ditto. Squatting my own identity.

Because they employ blitzkrieg tactics that nobody should be able to get away with and by the time we notice it's too late to change our consumption habits

And Bieber himself said "I was like baby, baby, baby oh", so it's not like your were saying anything controversial.