For professionals, looking to find employment, seeking employees, connect with others in their skill set, start projects there's always Linkedin. The only reason I use FB is that friends and relatives who have abandoned written letters, and rarely email, almost exclusively communicate there. I have a very skimpy profile, ignoring the repetitive prompts for more information. I am not so hungry for public discourse that I would even consider Twitter or Instagram, but I do understand that many feel that participation in these forums is a form of support and affirmation.

TANSTAAFL

"Do we need an Facebook?" is the real question. I miss old BBS's.

I would like to see more forums like Facebook but with privacy improvements, and with owners contractually binding themselves not to censor or purge their customers for political reasons.

Until this happens, people will use what's available, even if it's as crude as 8chan.

But now that Congress has started enacting exceptions to CDA Section 230, open Internet forums may start to disappear, in which case this one may need to become secret. Or the Internet may even become closed again, forcing us to recreate the likes of FidoNet. The marketplace will eventually find workarounds, though; it always does.

I feel I must add, though, that Facebook has always done data mining for political purposes. The only reason their management is now in crisis mode is that CA did it to help Republicans, while Zuck wants only Democrats to have that access. Zuck Fuckerberg.

people stopping to post things ON facebook is an easy and freedom-lovers alternative.

Me dino has The Gulch. For an alternative, this is all the interaction social media platform I feel any yearning for.
And even though I'm a frequent flyer point earner, I'm not really here all that much.

I was on FB years ago for about a month. As soon as I figured out just how truly invasive it was I dumped off of it. Just being on the WWW and even right here is bad enough because there is no privacy once we hit the send button.

Social media to the "vetted" media is like e-mail to the written letter. It is a low form of communication. People write e-mail like they speak, but the body language isn't there to add to the communication, and the inhibition of offending a person standing with you is lifted. This leads to terrible communications.

Social media is the same. People need to apply filters to absorbing it, and more misinformation may help tip that scale for some/many.

I suggest that social media voluntarily:
1. add a designation (e.g. icon) to data that comes from a verifiable source (a real person or agency)
2. Libel and fraud laws be applied as they should
3. add a designation to data that has been fact-checked in some manner.
The rest of the data can then become just noise.

The way I look at it: don't post anything on the web that you don't want the world to see. That way, if it gets seen by other parties, it is not a big deal.

I have survived many years without setting eye to Facebook. It is superficial, gossip, and people teling other people what home page photo they should or should not use. There are local informal groups in any town who talk over politics, economics, and more - as in our McDs! There is Disqus, thankfully there is the Gulch, neighbors who stop to talk during their walks. Any of those are more fulfilling than the junk on Facebook. I love to talk to truck drivers or people in checkout lines, anywhere - amazing conversations.

That's the risk one takes for expressing themselves on Facebook.

I don't use the platforms extensively, so I don't get what is the issue. They are like mini-billboards to get your message out. I know people who successfully connect their business with customers via FB, mostly for free. For free they can put stuff out there and reach an interested audience. They can pay money and reach more of them.

Why is it a scandal if people's information is shared? It seems like they're providing free billboard space and then trying to charge you if you want a bigger billboard on a more popular route. What's wrong with that?

"Social Media" per se is an oxymoron.

Why would people have an urge to post their most personal information for everyone to see?

It is a perfect example of limited intellect to do so. These people think they somehow attained more importance by being out in the open.

I stopped using Facebook some years ago but I think the cat's out of the bag and because it has been in the bag, (like when it was Ok that obobo used it), How the heck would we recognize it now.

There are some people trying to create an alternative but I await to see it.

Here are a couple of other articles on the subject: https://fearandblood.com/national/fac...
http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-43...