wyclif

If you have kids in school there, you can't keep up with school news, closings, etc. unless you're on Facebook. The schools, teachers, PTA, everything is on Facebook. All restaurants are on Facebook. Every single government entity and office is on Facebook. All DM traffic is on Messenger. Anybody selling anything is on Marketplace.

"What's so bad about that?" you might ask. It's this: in many cases, the only way you can contact any of these entities is on Facebook. When you try to explain to Filipinos that Facebook is a walled garden and a silo, they look at you as if smoke is coming out of their ears—they just can't comprehend data freedom and independence because these concepts are extremely impaired in their culture.

It's really depressing to think about these people's lives, but nobody should get too depressed because they don't know any better and are satisfied to be cattle. They'll happily use their device for absolutely nothing else but to flip between Facebook and Mobile Legends all day, every day, completely unaware that there's a whole other online world out there.

Unless they are in a developing country or a place where young people have very low agency, such as southeast Asia. For instance, in the Philippines, Facebook might as well be the internet. People there actually do believe FB is "the internet" and it's the only app they use on their phones.

The Philippines enters the chat

In all seriousness though, thanks for writing this, I found it helpful.

The double-whammy of them killing Reader and Wave was super deflating when it came to my view of Google as a company.