I think that threads like this are most helpful when they are
- not judgemental,
- recognize that people use platforms in different ways and have a diversity of social situations, and
- provide realistic alternatives.
Immigrants are in a very different situation than someone who only needs to stay connected with a handful of people (for whom email is probably a better alternative than any other platform). For some communities a broad network of shallow connections is very important. In this, Facebook excels. Telling people that they should maintain sms communications with 50 people in another country isn’t realistic. And to say that those relationships must not be that important then is quite judgemental.
Using a news feed reader (aka RSS reader) is a very practical, and some would say much better, way to find out about things that are important to us. That’s the point of this wiki page. Please feel free to post questions there about setting things up.
@MattStL, if the pages and groups you follow on Facebook are public, then you can use a service like this one to access the posts in a news feed reader. Unfortunately it won’t work for profiles.