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Comment by DanielBMarkham | Hacker News Reader

"...Well, that's the real problem, isn't it? If users aren't punishing Facebook by leaving the platform in droves, then what incentive does Facebook have to stop its consistently user-hostile business practices?..."

And the reason they're not leaving and don't want to leave? Where else are you going to connect up with old friends and remote family members?

I said it when Facebook started growing like gangbusters. Facebook is the frickin' devil. It uses your friends and family against you. For a free service, it sure costs like hell.

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> Where else are you going to connect up with old friends and remote family members?

Wait, are you really suggesting that Facebook is the only way to keep in touch with old friends and remote family?

You can connect with them over email, SMS, or even not at all. Or you can use Facebook and experience the downsides that everyone is mentioning. This is a timeless story where a company provides a service, people get used to it, then complain when the company changes the service against their liking. You are and have always been free to communicate as if FB never existed. They owe you and your family nothing. But in many cases people prefer to pay the costs of using the service. They're not the devil just because you fail at communication without them.

people could start writing letters again, that would be interesting

Maybe you could find a way for people to even send mail electronically. Over the internet. Almost a sort of an e-mail type of thing, if one were to be so bold as to coin a new word for it. Us smart internet engineers could even probably come up with at least 5 well-defined protocols that no one actually adheres to. This could be fun!!!

we could call it pen-mail ... part of the protocol could be that only letters written with a quill pen at a desk in a room with a fireplace would be able to be digitized and transmitted through pen-mail

>And the reason they're not leaving and don't want to leave? Where else are you going to connect up with old friends and remote family members?

Pick up the phone. There's FaceTime, Skype, text messages, actual phone calls, going to visit, sending letters, sending emails.

Or, if you can't be bothered to do any of that maybe you should not even bother trying to connect?

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