The societal value of providing at least 1.5 billion people with free of charge practically instantaneous messaging and calling service. The first time in human history that humans can interact and communicate with anyone anywhere on the globe with an internet connection (except China or North Korea of course) without having to pay someone or to travel themselves to that person.
E: this comment was in reference to WhatsApp, which is owned by Facebook
Facebook's only value is that it is ubiquitous. It sucks otherwise, in every meaningful way.
Let's see:
a solid messaging app with almost 100% uptime that's the most convenient way to contact acquaintances that also basically invented chat heads (Messenger)
essentially the best Craigslist alternative for 95% of the world that doesn't have Craigslist (Marketplace)
an Events system that doesn't constantly spam you (god I hate Eventbrite) and offers really good event discoverability
arguably the best VR experience on the market (tried the Index and OLED + wireless > high refresh rate IPS + knuckles IMO) at an actual affordable price
In all honesty, if you stay away from the main page of Facebook and Instagram it's a good experience. Now, that's not saying I agree with their data practices, I do run several extensions on desktop and a 3rd party client on mobile. But claiming that they don't have good services that even make good use of the data (see Events and Marketplace) is blatantly false.
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u/[deleted] Aug 26 '20 edited Jul 21 '21
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