On Facebook I can (passively) keep up with people I might otherwise rarely speak with. I don't have to call someone to see baby photos, or big life events. A lot of the posts point this out as a negative but frankly I couldn't disagree more. Being able to stay connected with people that I care about, regardless of how I do so, is a positive for me. I have neither the energy nor the extraversion to call up every person I occasionally think of, but on Facebook I can at least stay connected with them on some minor level. And it's the same for other people, too. Many people that I care about but we're both very introverted I've managed to maintain or even improve my relationship with them because Facebook exists.<p>It's also the hub for my family. Everyone is on it (for better or worse) and ultimately it's the easiest way for us to communicate with each other. Could this be done on an external bulletin board? Sure. Is that at all convenient or even a better solution? Probably not. The older folks aren't really interested in moving platforms, particularly when the one that exists already works perfectly for their use case.<p>I get it. They don't respect your privacy <i>at all</i> and likely never will. The writer of this post didn't get the same value out of it. He acknowledges that some people might find more utility in it than he does and that is fine. But to gain traction on Hacker News of all things feels peculiar to me. To read all these posts about how positive an impact deleting facebook has been on their lives when they're discussing these effects on another social media website, with even more questionable added value.<p>I have no connection with anyone on this website. I don't know any of you personally (at least as far as I know) and I've never developed any meaningful relationships with people on here either. The value to me perhaps is occasionally about finding new and interesting articles but more often than not it's largely tied to the discussions about technology with, if not actually, effectively anonymous folk. Those discussions are rarely fulfilling though, and it's often just a platform to try and point out why my point of view is correct or to argue with someone about theirs. I find value in it, but it's definitely not as valuable to me as Facebook.