Prog Archives Facebook

Yeah, that remark might be ok in a facetious vein but there's simply no comparison between whatever arguments you see here and Twitter.  Twitter is just impossibly ugly.

I hate the idea of being connected 24/7 and the internet of things.

Now that's not to say that I've had to deal with trolls and such in the past. You just unfriend them. Sure, that sets my Facebook account up to be an echo chamber of sorts. But that's OK. My life doesn't depend on Facebook and there are better sites out there for doing research. Like others have said, it's another way of keeping in touch with family.

One other benefit to Facebook: genealogy of living people. When public records on Ancestry.com only get you so far with tracing a tree into the present, sometimes finding living people on Facebook opens up more current family relationships and details that otherwise are unavailable. 

So rather than treat it as "that lousy social media," think out of the box and treat is as a resource for your hobbies, for your interests, and, in my case, for data to help me fill in family trees. To each his/her own.

Yeah, that’s generally how I feel about it. A mate of mine asked me not long ago, millions of people can’t be wrong, to which I responded, yes they can, and very often are.

I do use FB for all the same advantages you mention.  Rather, but for these advantages, I would long ago have deleted my account.  I hold my nose and ignore the toxicity but it's not pleasant.  See, what do you do when the 'trolls' posting malicious propaganda are your friends or relatives?  Sounds like you haven't been in that situation very often, but I have.  In certain countries, it's a lonely furrow to remain a liberal (especially, er, a centrist, supposedly the root of all evil) even though people in these countries, like mine, continue to assail the imaginary strawman of an evil liberal nexus having a stranglehold over institutions. You discover sides of people you otherwise like that you wish you hadn't.  And a simple unfollow cannot make you 'unsee' that. 

No, I guess that I haven't been in that situation much. Most of the folks I've unfriended were not actually real friends or relatives, though I have unfriended a couple actual friends, a couple co-workers, and one distant relative. I'm sorry you've had these experiences. If I were in your situation I think I'd hold my nose and try to ignore it too. It all comes down to how valuable your positive experiences are as opposed to the negative ones. Once it gets past a tipping point is when you start questioning whether it's worth the stress spending time on Facebook (or any other social media platform).