People really just don't seem to understand that experiences with social media are specific to the individual. I guess it's understandable. I see the same Google Maps as everyone else does. I see the same Hacker News as everyone else who visits HN.

But Facebook isn't like that. Your Facebook timeline is based entirely on your friends and how you interact with Facebook.

And so, every few weeks it seems, we get these posts from some techie who believes that his (it's always a man) experiences with social media are universal.

It just ain't so. This may be a pat little summary of why using Facebook is unrewarding for the author, but to generalize that to a "failed" experiment for everyone, would require talking to other humans about how they experience Facebook — i.e., doing actual research. (Even then, the conclusion would only hold, at best, for the types of humans with whom the author has spoken.) And as usual for these rants, there's no evidence this research has been done.

This piece of writing, therefore, does not contribute meaningfully to the discussion around Facebook.

This comment is contentless. It doesn't address a single specific thing the article says. Instead it offers woolly generalities ("Japan was threatened on many fronts and made the best choice it could. That much is clear") and platitudes ("all of the actions, taken together, were the reason for the war to end. Yes, Stalin played a big role. But it's not an either-or situation"). It sounds like it's saying something; indeed, it sounds like it's saying something wise and avuncular. But I've read it three times and can't find a single part that is saying anything at all, other than where it repeats exactly the bromide about how the Pacific war ended that the OP is critiquing ("dropping the bombs on Japan saved millions of both Japanese and allied lives. It served as a quick end to a long war")—ironically, right after it says "Nobody is finding comfort in simplistic stories". If you're going to respond to a critique, shouldn't you answer what it actually says?

It's unfair to put the article in the same bucket as "UFO stories". No one who has read it (and is being fair) would describe it as "speculation". It isn't anything like counterfactual fan fiction. Almost the entire piece does nothing but cite facts, such as: the dropping of the nuclear bombs does not figure significantly in historical records of the Japanese leadership's discussion about surrender; the Japanese war council decided on August 8 not even to discuss the Hiroshima bombing; damage to Hiroshima and Nagasaki was not out of scale with the earlier fire-bombings of other cities; Japanese leaders had expressed a willingness to sacrifice their cities if necessary; Japan's war strategy was predicated on the Soviets staying neutral; and so on. Are these wrong? If so, how? Are there other, more important facts omitted? If so, what are they?

The negative responses to this article so far are so insubstantial that they form a defense of it by omission. I'm very curious now to hear a credible counterargument. Surely there is one?