I find this kind of comment fascinating because it's illustrative of how humans can form intentional blindspots as to the utility of a person or institution when when all they care about are the negative aspects of that person's or institution's existence.

    op: "I don't care about thing X disappearing"
    re: "While you may not care about it because of Y, X also provides benefit Z to other people"
    op: "But would there be any drawbacks?"

yeah, there would be drawbacks, other people would lose Z, which may matter a lot of them even if it doesn't matter to you. Someone just told you about Z, and you just responded as if you weren't just told about Z"

These days I find it incredibly frustrating to deal with people who have conclusively decided they don't like something and that renders them incapable of acknowledging other benefits that said thing provides even if those benefits aren't relevant to them or are less relevant than the things they vocalize caring about.

I can agree with the "intentional blindspots" argument but turn it right around.

I'd like to explicitly note that the parent post did not say "X also provides benefit Z to other people" - it asserted "Facebook is an unparalleled titan in the realm of advertising" which is a substantially different thing; it's not something that some people simply don't care about and a benefit to some other people and considering those statements as equivalent is a (very large) intentional blindspot. The current way of how advertising is done (driven, in part, by FB) is also a harm to many people and society at large, so publicly making an implicit assumption that "advertising" is at most neutral is not okay, it's something that should be called out.

This very "unparalleled titan in the realm of advertising" aspect is a major cost on society, a net harm that perhaps should be tolerated if it's outweighed by some other benefits FB provides (such as the "utility-level communication system for a big chunk of the globe"), but as itself it's definitely not something that should be treated as benign just because some people get paid for it.

If FB advertising disappeared with no other drawbacks, that would be a great thing. Of course, there are some actual drawbacks, but even so it's quite reasonable to motivate people to ask about the actual drawbacks of FB being down, because "oh but ads" (with which the grandparent post started) is not one.

Thank you, I agree with everything you said here. But I'd also like to address the other things I was answering with the drawbacks quip...

> WhatsApp is basically a utility-level communication system for a big chunk of the globe.

Unfortunately, it's not an actual utility though, which is precisely my point. It's pure folly to build your business around a pseudo utility owned by a private company.

> Instagram is a key cultural driver of the Western world.

I honestly have no idea how this is being presented as a good thing. A "key cultural driver of the western world" is an app whose entire purpose is to harvest your data and sell it to dodgy partners who will use it to usurp democracy.

There are several people earning their living through Facebook/Instagram and there is a whole marketplace that would impact lots of people. Don't get me wrong, I don't use or like FB in any way but FB disappearing overnight would definitely have drawbacks for lots of people.

Replace Facebook in your post with human trafficking :)

Obvious I'm not serious, and it's popular sentiment here that "Fuck Facebook... Oh but I use Instragram and WhatsApp of course!", but the point was "some people making a living on x" isn't really a great argument for "x is harmful and we might be better without it".

There would be a massive opening for new platforms to take over, and the odds that they are also based in the West would be much lower.

What's the advantage of using a Chinese platform instead of Facebook in terms of privacy, freedom of speech or political influence?

yes. I want to see what my friends and acquaintances are up to.

My time on Facebook made it abundantly clear how racist, misogynist and otherwise vile a large portion of the people I grew up with are. I was much happier having a superficial contact with them once every ten years at a high school reunion. I'm no longer on Facebook (or Twitter).

Occasionally, I'll see/hear/do something and think that it would have made a good status update/tweet, but then I remember that these things have happened to me for decade before social media was a thing and life was fine. Some I'll share with my wife or a friend, most just disappear and that's fine too.

People seem to not know that you can unfriend or at minimum unfollow people on Facebook.

Why did you put up with racist and misogynistic people on your feed? Why did you feel the need to delete your account instead of unfollowing people?

My feed is nice and clean, with family, some friends, and some pages.

I did. Facebook also spent a lot of time dumping stuff in my newsfeed from people I wasn't friends with (Twitter also liked to do this). It was a lot easier to just not have all that crap in my life.

An act of unfriending someone is interpreted as hostile action. It's much easier just to not be there in the first place.

Then unfollow. They don't know if you unfollow.

How about you call them to set up a meeting to catch up?

Why? It is not as efficient. I can buy everything from stores but I use amazon, same thing. I don't actually use facebook though because I don't care about anyone really but for people that care, it is a solid platform.

There is a gap between "I want to know what people I know are up to" and "I want to meet with those people one by one to see what they are up to". Some people just want to passively watch and that is ok.

> Some people just want to passively watch and that is ok.

And this is the culprit for loneliness.