Don’t compare Facebook chats with nights in the pub

I’m enjoying the ‘Facebook v pub’ debate in your Letters page, but it feels like a false comparison to me. I use both, but for very different things. For all its many faults, Facebook is simply the best way yet devised to keep in touch with friends and family wherever they are. I can’t say I’m terribly bothered whether this company or that company sold my Facebook data. They can show me all the adverts they like - I always ignore them.

When I go down the pub, it’s to meet people who live near enough to me that I don’t need to be Facebook friends with them. If they’ve got something to tell me, it can wait until our weekly pub quiz get-together. If any of these friends moved to outer Mongolia, then I would use Facebook to stay in touch.

It’s not a case of one or the other. If I meet with people more than once a month, I don’t tend to talk to them via Facebook. But it’s useful for more distant friends. Stephen Moyles

I deal with communications for my local village association and as such need to use Facebook. I fully appreciate some of the criticism that readers have put forward in Computeractive, but here is a good example of how Facebook came to the rescue for one person.

While shopping recently I found a disabled parking permit in a car park. I was able to search the name on the permit in Facebook and used its Messenger service to contact the person, who came to collect it from me an hour later. As most people prefer their phone number not to be in a directory these days, on this occasion Facebook came up trumps by enabling me to trace the person quickly. They were very grateful and I was pleased to help. John Lattimore