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Comment by stephenr | Hacker News Reader

> It is rather obvious that: if the main purpose of a business is to grow revenue/market share, if successful, it will eventually grow to close to 100% market share.

The main purpose of a business is to generate profit, not just revenue.

Apple is pretty clear evidence that you don't need a massive market share to be highly profitable.

> be a hermit and stop using FB and WhatsApp

Is that seriously how you see this? How exactly do you think people lived 10+ years ago, before either of those things existed?

I haven't had a Facebook account for many years and I've never had a WhatsApp account. Does that make me a hermit? Should I inform my wife and son? Will my friends already be aware of my hermit status, or will you inform them for me, because obviously without Facebook or WhatsApp I have no possible way to communicate with them.

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C'mon don't be so literal. Hermit as in isolated from a social interactive context. For instance, take this personal example: I like trail running. Nowadays, the ONLY way to find out when a cool race is happening is through Facebook. See, companies don't mind losing a few of us hermits that decide to stay off social networks and so they devote a great deal of its resources to communicate (and build brand) on these walled gardens. Heck! I even know new companies that don't even bother making a website anymore, the FB page is enough. Whatsapp is even worse since in my country it has become the de facto means of digital communication. I have friends, family, work and shared interest groups. Trust me, from personal experience, where I live. if you do not have FB or Whatsapp, you are out of the social interaction, a sort of hermit.

Your anecdotal experience does not change the reality of the audience that uses social networking and messaging and the dominant players in those markets. If you decided you wanted to join in your choices would be limited, and these two services dominate their respective markets.

The ability to have friends and a family without the use of Facebook and WhatsApp is "anecdotal evidence"?

Are you fucking kidding me?

well, in terms of anecdotal evidence, I live and work abroad and tools like Facebook and WhatsApp make it possible to communicate with my friends and family back home at a cost of next to nothing.

A decade ago, international phone calls and SMS would have cost me an arm and a leg, and there's really no equivalent for Facebook which lets me keep in touch with the lives of people I care about on the other side of the world.

Yes, there was email but that doesn't really substitute for the short low-latency, ubiquitous worldwide communication of WhatsApp (and it certainly didn't 10 years ago when it was largely tethered to a desk) nor the ability to keep up with my friends unsolicited that is Facebook (what am I supposed to do, ask all of my friends to write me an email of what they're doing once a week?)

Are global migrant workers an edge case? perhaps. But while forfeiting FB and WhatsApp wouldn't make me a hermit, it would certainly make communications with my friends and family back home to be lesser in number and richness.

I moved away from the state I grew up in at age 23. 10 years and 3 states and a different country later, I still keep in touch with the people who are actual friends.

I didn't say you shouldn't or can't use Facebook. I said it's ridiculous to equate a lack of Facebook with a hermit lifestyle, even for geographically distant people.

There are literally dozens of ways to keep in contact using Internet based communication channels. If you choose to use those that are controlled by a privacy whoring twat of a company, that's your business.

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