We are back to literally my first sentence of my first comment on this topic - women (and primary caregivers), are disproportionally affected by the charms of Facebook.
My wife went through a difficult personal journey around the time of the birth of our second child, when she decided to leave all social media. She decided that the benefits of this, which include a mind not addicted to the endless drip of social media, and also giving our kids a chance to live distraction-free, outweighed the disadvantages. Yes, giving up social media when your personal time is already incredibly disjointed and isolated is difficult - Facebook does provide some (at least in my wife's opinion) superficial and temporary benefits there.
>we'll have to come up with a good alternative if we want that to change
What was wrong with what we had before? That is, cohesive, in-person communities. Finding a FOSS alternative to Facebook, etc, as the solution to society's ills is, IMHO, missing the point.
I don't think there's a way for you to make your case without being dismissive of others use cases, like I've pointed out before, and like you're doing now.
For example, your post contains no meaningful suggestions for the person in the article, you just essentially say their use case isn't important and is really just a social media addiction, so I guess they should just get over it?
> What was wrong with what we had before? That is, cohesive, in-person communities.
If you have some suggestions there which would help the person in the article with their use cases, please share. Like, which specific communities exist where they live, for the same purpose, with the same friends, and without a social media presence?
Note that a lot of those in-person communities organize and communicate over social media, so you'll have to exclude those as alternatives.
That's correct, I am dismissing all use cases for Facebook. I too personally believe that the negatives (the constant drip of distraction fragments your time and ruins your attention span, you and all of the social capital you invest in the platforms are tiny cogs in M. Zuckerburg's machine, and it displaces the richer interactions we should experience) outweigh the positives.
The underlying cases are important, in fact very important. It's literally building your social life. But I personally think FB is a horrible tool to use for that.
I'm not saying it's easy. You might not get to meet the same people, or many at all. I think it's very different over in the US, as it seems your community groups are deeply entrenched in FB. But - if we think that's bad, someone has to make a start, by doing things another way.
You can disagree, and do your life as you see fit. And just hope you don't get banned from the platform that you have built your life on, but have absolutely no control over nor ability to plead your case.
Edit: A useful analogy might be - imagine a group who have changed their diet to consist almost entirely of candy samples from grocery shops. The response to those shops no longer giving away free candy should not be "but how will these people continue to get their nutrition from free candy?".
My wife went through a difficult personal journey around the time of the birth of our second child, when she decided to leave all social media. She decided that the benefits of this, which include a mind not addicted to the endless drip of social media, and also giving our kids a chance to live distraction-free, outweighed the disadvantages. Yes, giving up social media when your personal time is already incredibly disjointed and isolated is difficult - Facebook does provide some (at least in my wife's opinion) superficial and temporary benefits there.
>we'll have to come up with a good alternative if we want that to change
What was wrong with what we had before? That is, cohesive, in-person communities. Finding a FOSS alternative to Facebook, etc, as the solution to society's ills is, IMHO, missing the point.