> You should better ask why the mass of people registered on it to let this happen.
Social networks gravitate towards oligopolies(+), because people go wherever everybody else is. Even in Germany, there is a social price to pay for not having a Facebook account.
(+) Oligopolies, because there seems to be a age generation effect: children don't use the network where their parents are.
This is one of the areas where self-regulation simply doesn't work.
> Even in Germany, there is a social price to pay for not having a Facebook account.
I often write here at HN that there is no "objective" status in society, but rather status in various, often vaguely defined groups in the society, where the individual status symbols can even contradict each other.
It is not my impression that all in all I had to pay a social price for not having a Facebook account at any time (quite the opposite). Rather in some groups this lead to a social malus, but in other groups it gave a large social bonus.
I fully agree that this highly depends on the groups to which you belong. Personally, I have not experienced a malus for not having a Facebook account, but I know of occurrences (e.g., a student learning group organizing their communication via Facebook). For myself, I have faced a potential social price for not having a WhatsApp account that was large enough to let me create an account.
Social networks gravitate towards oligopolies(+), because people go wherever everybody else is. Even in Germany, there is a social price to pay for not having a Facebook account.
(+) Oligopolies, because there seems to be a age generation effect: children don't use the network where their parents are.
This is one of the areas where self-regulation simply doesn't work.