To be or not to be on Facebook

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Facebook is a continent beyond whose frontiers nothing else exists; the barrier between those who are on and not on Facebook is virtually insurmountable ... Mediapart's film critic Emmanuel Burdeau, who turned off his Facebook account for a period, gives his personal reflections on the social media platform and how its presence is changing the very nature of how we discuss things.

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I quit Facebook two days before the second round of the French presidential elections in May. The tone of the exchanges, which had been getting more and more heated over the preceding weeks, had hit such a fever pitch that I had to stop and get some air. My break was short-lived: ten days later I reactivated my account.

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