This isn’t just about losing your Facebook account. It’s about what else you can’t do because much of our society relies on Facebook. This is the real problem. From TFA:
This article is not a complaint about Meta; it’s a wider discussion on how we as a society have allowed platforms like Facebook to become borderline necessary to participate in society. It’s about how a company is allowed to be the sole decision maker in whether you can participate in those areas of society.
Through network effects, Facebook, Google, and friends have created a centralized version of the Internet, only accessible through them.
We’re in a situation where companies have managed to embed themselves so far into society, that they’re acting like providers of social services.
you don’t “lose” a meta account. you’re liberated from it
edit: started reading the article… wow. completely pwnd by angry minecraft incels. the loss of your social media is FAR from the main issue you need to address dude
If I was her, I’d publish the threat and result in the place I hosted the mod, then nuke my own mod.
But I’m a spiteful little shit.
I don’t know whether to upvote or downvote - a developer not knowing to avoid Facebook to the extent possible?
The author goes into detail about the problems she experienced as a result of not having access to Meta products. She seems to recognize that it’s bad that there’s no way to read a cafe menu without an Instagram account or that the only messaging services some of her contacts use belong to Meta.
These are not problems the author can fix. She would be negatively impacted in the real world by not having access to Meta products.
Honestly, every cafe that only distributes its menu solely via Instagram will not be visited by me. And if some contacts insist on using meta services for IM, fine, you can write an SMS or call me.
If you are not willing to do that much, you do not really understand what meta is doing.
every cafe that only distributes its menu solely via Instagram will not be visited by me
There’s a good chance I’d walk out over that too. I’ve never encountered it in the USA or Germany, but the author made it sound common in Australia.
you can write an SMS or call me
The author specifically mentioned people telling her “Oh I don’t text, do you have Insta or WhatsApp?” This is also true in Europe; WhatsApp is essentially universal, and some people have to pay per SMS sent. Some people also have another messaging app (Signal is reasonably common among my social group), but that won’t cover everyone, and group chats with more than three or four participants just aren’t going to happen.
If you are not willing to do that much, you do not really understand what meta is doing.
The average person does not really understand what Meta is doing. I do, and I think the author does, but neither of us is in a position to change the behavior of a majority of people in our regions.
The only way we can change this is if we don’t participate and be vocal about it why. If this leads to people not texting me, well its their choice if they want to reach me or not. Otherwise it will be going on forever and not a single blog article will change that.
If you’re willing to endure a lot of inconvenience to maybe move the needle a tiny bit, I admire you. It also differs from place to place; if no restaurants exclusively put their menus on Instagram where you live, and most people do use SMS, then it wouldn’t be as painful for you as for the author.
I’ve made the move to grapheneOS and away from google and meta a few weeks back. Yes, there are some things that are not as easy as before but most of my friends moved to signal with me. Some in addition to WhatsApp, some exclusively.
