Facebook has become the third largest nation | Hacker News Reader

Facebook has become the third largest nation

economist.com

12 pointsjakarta22 comments

That's not true. I'm pretty sure it would be topped by the nations of: 1) People that eat rice, 2) Those living below 1000ft altitude, and 3) People whose favorite color is either red or blue.

Oh, wait, those are all random collections of people that have nothing to do with "nations". My bad.

Also, it claims Facebook in 3rd at 500 million, US in 4th at 310 million; so it would have jumped into 3rd quite a while ago, making the country comparison even less relevent as a news claim. Is it really that hard just to say that Facebook now has 500 million users and leave it at that without making up a silly headline and graphic?

> Oh, wait, those are all random collections of people that have nothing to do with "nations". My bad.

"“[It] is a device that allows people to get together and control their own destiny, much like our nation-state,” says David Post, a law professor at Temple University, Philadelphia."

"“[It] is a device that allows people to get together and control their own destiny, much like our nation-state,” says David Post, a law professor at Temple University, Philadelphia."

I am so happy I didn't have any professors so dense as to think that "coming together" on a social networking site had anything to do with the kind of "controlling one's destiny" that a nation-state provides.

I'm hoping the guy was seriously misquoted.

"[It] is a device that allows people to get together and control their own destiny..."

Seeing that my high school classmates have gotten fatter helps me control my own destiny how?

By making it easier to convince yourself to work out regularly.

Or it helps me justify not working out because everyone else got fat too.

I shudder at the thought of a nation made up of Facebook users. It would be like a nation of People subscribers, except they'd also play inane grinding games...

I feel like there's some sort of incredible potential here, if only we could get grinding games to correspond to some real world activity...

Sounds like the book MetaGame.

And just think, if the grinders actually made any money at it, they'd be the next economic powerhouse!

One of the largest fascist nations too? It is a corporation and a dictatorship of sorts isn't it?

> It is a corporation and a dictatorship of sorts isn't it?

Facebook is a corporation, but it lacks the ability to coerce anyone. Instead, it depends on their voluntary acts, which they're free to stop at any time.

Dictatorships, heck govts, don't work that way.

Well, most liberal governments, you're free to leave and go somewhere else at any time. You can even cancel your citizenship if you want.

...if somewhere else will take you in. This can be non-trivial, especially if you are planning on working for a living.

There's always someplace you could move and pull it off. It just might not be nice.

My 70 year old father has a facebook account and doesn't have the slighest clue what do with it, consequently it goes unused.

They may 500 million accounts but they only get 150 million or less users per month. Of that, I bet 50 million of them make up the lion's share of the pageviews. 5 million are complete facebook nutters playing farmville and mobwars 24/7.

If Facebook is a nation of 500 million then the US is a nation of billions, if you count all the tourists and business types flying in/out.

The 500m figure was for active users. I'm not sure they announce exactly what that means, but typically it's a sign in during the past ~30 days.

Except that facebook report their user numbers as users who have logged into FB in the last 30 days.

So either they are lying or you are wrong.

To answer your speculations: no, no, no and no. Here is the first result from Google for "facebook statistics".

http://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?statistics

"users who have returned to the site in the last 30 days" facebook.com/press/info.php?factsheet

Sure, Facebook is the 3rd largest nation, but how many of those accounts are multiples belonging to the same person?

The day Facebook monopolizes the use of force on its members? That's the day it becomes an nation.

It is nowhere near, no matter how many people join.

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