You're being disingenuous and that is not going to change anybody's mind. Walled gardens are nice because of network effects and convenience. Back when Facebook was good, it was VERY good. I had just moved abroad and on Facebook I could follow the lives of the people I had left. I did not need to do point-to-point communication every day with everybody, but could peripherally follow their lives and get in touch via a comment or a PM. I could contact people using a simple @ without needing to keep information Facebook still have some of that convenience, but blended with AI slop and ads. For me, and obviously for you, that trade-off is no longer worth it, but for some it is. Pretending it has no value is not going to convince anybody; you are effectively calling your friends and family dumb. You are asking them to use multiple messaging apps to keep up with you instead of you keeping multiple apps to keep up with them. You are the one being difficult, not them. It's not easy switching networks; network effect is the only reason Facebook is still alive, and in a generation TikTok will have taken over that role. You can convince some to shift and grow the base, making the shift easier. Different groups use different networks. And ask yourself: are your principles more important than the people you ostensibly want to communicate with?