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Comment by finaliteration | Hacker News Reader

I’m not totally clear on how his posting on Facebook invalidates his message (assuming that’s the argument being made by posting this comment). Facebook is, for better or worse, one of the best ways to get a message out to many people, especially if they are friends or followers. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to post a final “I’m leaving Facebook” message there so everyone sees it.

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Apologies if it was unclear. My intent in posting his message was to summarize the article and because I personally found it concise and inspiring. I do not think it is unreasonable at all for him to have posted it there. In fact I think it’s a powerful statement.

Makes sense. Sorry for the confusion on my part.

No worries. HN is a tough crowd and sincerity or sarcasm can be hard to interpret over text. I have seen people using /s to reduce confusion here and I try to follow that convention when I can’t resist revealing my jaded and cynical side.

> I don’t think it’s unreasonable to post a final “I’m leaving Facebook” message there so everyone sees it.

Especially if an important part of that message is to disseminate a forwarding address.

I think we can talk about this in a non-gotcha sense, so for what it's worth, it is interesting that he felt the best way to reach his audience with this message was the platform he's leaving.

If he had a better way of reaching his audience, why not use that instead?

Because "his audience" in this case is Facebook users? If he were quitting MySpace in 2018, it would make sense to post a message there. The users of the service are the ones who might miss him, and who might benefit from a warning.

Because this is the best way to reach people who wouldn't see it any other way?

If some subset of your friends/connections are only reachable by Facebook, they are the ones you are going to disconnect with by doing this. Makes sense to me.

Well yes, but it's interesting, to me anyway, that Facebook is that platform for him, the platform where he can connect with the biggest number of his audience.

But this is obvious, otherwise leaving Facebook wouldn't be noteworthy at all. That's ultimately why he's on Facebook in the first place. If Facebook were ineffective at providing people with network effects, it would not be necessary to get people to leave it.

It holds even if it isn’t the biggest number. It could be a small number, but how else would you reach them?

If Facebook is the only way to reach your audience, maybe don't quit it?

It clearly isn't here, so his post would have made more sense outside of Facebook.

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