“Protest” by way of market choice is such a tired fallacy. It’s really amazing so many HN readers are so ready to take such outdated philosophy to the grave.
I am in very strongly favour of GDPR and other similar regulations. I just also think that enabling giants like Facebook to abuse you by admitting that you are unable to function without them is a bad strategy. Diversify if you can, and regulate to protect those who cannot. Nobody said you cannot approach something like this on more than one front.
My (individual) approach has been to try to carefully curate my content where it's associated with my Real Name: FB and LinkedIn. LI especially - I think everybody does this.
I am absolutely not the person I portray on FB. Co workers. People I know, they're all pretty aware of this.
It is an extra level of intimacy in my personal relationships that I allow them to know the real me.
Other social networks, where I can use sock puppets - I get out my frustrations by talking about things I would never talk about on FB. In this way, I maximize the usefulness of these tools, and I minimize my usefulness as a tool for them.
“We but mirror the world. All the tendencies present in the outer world are to be found in the world of our body. If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change."
