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Comment by troymc | Hacker News Reader

You aren't required to use Facebook, you're free to use alternatives, but it's become so ubiquitous that having a Facebook profile has become necessary to participate fully in online life. (Think of the Facebook like buttons and "login with Facebook" options you see scattered all over the web, or TechCrunch comments, for that matter.)

To put it another way, why should people with legitimate reasons for using pseudonyms be forced into a ghetto? What kind of freedom is that?

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but it's become so ubiquitous that having a Facebook profile has become necessary to participate fully in online life.

I must not be participating fully in an 'online life' then. When I look at my non-tech friends I do much more participating online than any of them do and they all have FB accounts and I do not.

You can't even sign in to some websites without a FB or Twitter login.

Blame those sites for that, there is no excuse for not offering alternative login options.

Funny... if one spends enough time reading Hacker News threads about Facebook, you'd get the impression that it's the ghetto.

I don't use Facebook. And whenever I go to a site that requires Facebook credentials to comment, I just don't comment. It does not bother me because that is a choice I made in not using Facebook as my online persona. But that is the truth to all this. I do not blame Facebook for their design of the service, I am the one to blame for not wanting to adhere to them. And I get to live with the consequences.

So you're saying that a Facebook account should probably be added to the list of Fundamental Human Needs? Because anything not on that list is a want, and you do not (yet) have a right to have your wants the way you want them.

Don't be ridiculous. I'm not saying having a Facebook account should be a right. I am saying that Facebook is being unreasonable in not allowing people with good reasons for using peudonyms: abuse survivors, academics, activists, artists, authors, bloggers.. see http://my.nameis.me/

That's why I say "fsck you" to these buttons and choose the Twitter one or put my data manually.

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