I don't really agree with rantwasp and in his/hers answer to you I don't understand what he is talking about lawsuits.
In my university (in Europe) not only several student organizations used exclusiveley Facebook, but professors (well students really) as well.
For example, we would be teams of maybe ~10 -20 people at a given hospital department and because situations were fluid and changes constant we needed to coordinate. Times of impromtu lectures obviously weren't set, patients that may be of interest for all to see & know the case etc were always changing. The doctors would inform one student and then depend on the students informing each other for all these things and guess what they used. Facebook & messenger.
In this situation the only out was depending on a person who had a fb account to inform me which did add extra difficulties. That is what I did mostly but it wasn't easy.
That sounds horrible. Universities — especially public ones — should relay communications through either open standards (email) or through a university maintained website.
My university in Canada did well in this respect. I would have thought that European universities would be “enlightened” to the fact that using a private company to relay university communications is a mistake.
I'm at a public University in Europe and can say that we do occasionally rely on third parties, but only such third parties with which we have an appropriate contract.
We also have self-hosted equivalent for almost everything and a quick email to the data protection officer will get problems rectified swiftly.
Most student organizations are also very mindful about not using third party services for their events. However, we often get the feedback that many students would rather we just use Discord rather than Mattermost/Jitsu/...
In my university (in Europe) not only several student organizations used exclusiveley Facebook, but professors (well students really) as well.
For example, we would be teams of maybe ~10 -20 people at a given hospital department and because situations were fluid and changes constant we needed to coordinate. Times of impromtu lectures obviously weren't set, patients that may be of interest for all to see & know the case etc were always changing. The doctors would inform one student and then depend on the students informing each other for all these things and guess what they used. Facebook & messenger.
In this situation the only out was depending on a person who had a fb account to inform me which did add extra difficulties. That is what I did mostly but it wasn't easy.