It's not exactly choice. I'm well aware there were other social services that were before FB but you have to look at the timeline. The internet NOW is objectively probably still pretty young (it's hard to quantify age with something like this). Back then in 2004-6 even more so. There's a real need to connect with people (even if I have your email, "loose connections" are important. If I have a timeline, I can share my status update to my page and all my loose connections around the world - people I know now, people I lost touch with but have reconnected with, and other groups of people - in a way I wouldn't be doing with email)

Facebook was the thing that came along post Myspace and unfortunately is the product of someone with lacking ethical imagination. People feel forced to use it or else they don't know why it's bad. And I don't think people who use these things are automatically addicts. It's not their fault the company and leadership lies to them (about various things. Privacy and whatever else)

Of course people "can just stop". But that's hard. We shouldn't be punished for involving ourselves in the game of network effects, of wanting to have friends

When Mark Zuckerberg makes a policy like "it's ok to call certain groups mentally ill" (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42651178) it's rug pulling. Even if you didn't know about Dumb Fucks (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1692122) you use these services both out of necessity and because you think it's a way to keep in touch. People don't "willingly choose" this. They had the rug pulled out repeatedly, whether it's censoring links to competitors, shadow profiles, impossible to delete an account, or whatever. It doesn't have to be like this but that doesn't mean people using their products are bad people for using their products