Please use email instead, which is a standardized open protocol that does give people some choices.

You can always exchange email addresses before closing down accounts to stay in touch.

My generation doesn’t use emails basically. I changed emails quite a lot through my younger years as did my friends so it wouldn’t have been useful. We used to ask for people’s facebook shortly after meeting them. It’s the best tool to create and maintain your social graph. I understand that not everybody use it this way, and that’s fine, but if you do please think about that. It’s really heart breaking how I lost contact with old friends due to this

Locating and contacting old friends is entirely within your means in 2022. What is most striking to me as someone in my early thirties is how much learned helplessness is associated with these communication technologies that supposedly enhance our capabilities.

Facebook makes it easy to curate the appearance of friendship, but meaningful relationships take time and effort in the real world to maintain. People have traded quantity for quality, and the true impetus for this transformation is that social graphs with more nodes are easier for facebook to make money from.

This enabled me reach out to an ”apparent” friend (someone I had very casual relationship with and didn’t talk to for 10 years) in 30 second. And that person helped my “true” friends evacuate from Ukraine and avoid being killed.

Extended social networks are integral part of humanity and communities. Being isolated and interacting only with handful of true friends is more modern invention.

I can tell you that facebook has allowed me to keep in touch with a huge amount of friends and there’s just no way to look for people in 2022 if they don’t have fb. At least the friends I lost. I travel a lot btw.

I want to reconnect to someone I went to high school with. What steps would you suggest I follow to do so?

Now is the time to do something about that then.

Perhaps hand out an e-mail address and/or something else that does not require people to agree to some corporate ToS/privacy policy where people can reach you to the ones you do care about staying in touch with, preemptively for when they or you stops using Facebook, be it by choice or force.

It is not acceptable that a single or a handful of corps should own the digital social room. If you rely only on them, then it is you who close people out, not the ones who choose to leave or get kicked out.

I get that it's a sad situation but you can not put the blame on the ones who left. Learn from that and you won't have to experience it again.

I guess I am part of your generation as well because I recognize your description.

I really strongly disagree with you. Before facebook mail was prevalent and yet it was impossible to keep in touch with people or to find lost friends. When facebook came about it was a godsend, and suddenly it made sense that a monopoly on social graph was the missing piece all along. You might not like facebook for some of the decisions they took, or what you read in the media, but it is still insanely useful to a lot of people however mad you are about it.

As if sending messages to an abandoned account they'll never check is any better? If they close their account instead of abandoning it, you won't waste your time waiting for a response to a message they'll never see. Instead you can ask mutual friends and acquaintances to help you establish contact. This almost always works and only requires a little effort.

Zuck needs you more than you need Zuck.

Calls, letters, and in-person visits are still a thing, and they are all vastly superior to facebook. Besides, the alternative to deletion is a bunch of zombie accounts that appear to be real people but will never respond to messages. Best to make it obvious and not leave an account around to cause confusion.

every time I read this kind of comment I just imagine someone who never left their hometown and doesn't have a lot of friends.

You weren't actually friends if all you had was a Facebook connection.

wow :) thank you for defining who is my friends