facebook is as much just a website as the catholic church is just some buildings with a book. there is a lot behind it.
This is a terrible comparison. A decade old tech company is not at all comparable to one of the oldest and most powerful and influential institutions in history.
Zuckerberg with the strip of tape over his own laptop's camera is like the Pope, living in a palace wearing a gold hat while claiming to be all about the poor.
Actually it's rather apt given that there are more Facebook users (2B) than Catholics (1.2B).
The reality is that Facebook has a disturbing amount of influence on what a quarter of the worlds population see and hear on any given day. No, Facebook can't directly give orders but as a mechanism for propaganda it has unparalleled reach.
> I suppose that makes Zuckerberg god in your analogy.
Closer to the Pope.
I apologize for sounding like a jerk, but have you ever read a history book? The impact of the Catholic church on human history completely eclipses Facebook's entire existence, the comparison is completely absurd. Comparing Facebook's monthly active users to the global population of Catholics is like comparing the total number of World of Warcraft subscribers to the total number of active duty U.S. soldiers; the difference in numbers is categorically meaningless.
> The reality is that Facebook has a disturbing amount of influence on what a quarter of the worlds population see and hear on any given day.
I don't really think it does. As I stated, the majority of people use Facebook for pretty standard social behavior like photo-sharing, messaging and comments. People go to Facebook because they can see what's going on with their friends and family or they subscribe to content providers that they already like and explicitly hide content they don't want to see. Don't misunderstand, this isn't to say that Facebook couldn't potentially abuse it's power for the purpose of spreading propaganda, but the reality is that this isn't really happening because people don't look to Facebook to form their opinions, they look to the echo chambers that Facebook allows them to curate at their own discretion. Facebook is a mirror of their users and that is by design because Facebook only care about eyeballs. Of course, whenever Facebook filters or deletes something people get up in arms and complain about censorship and blah blah blah, but 99% of the time this is just sour grapes from the community that favored the removed content.