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Comment by manjushri | Hacker News Reader

>By that definition, every conceivable grouping of human beings that has any sort of leadership has a government, but that definition is so broad as to be useless.

Well, that is in accordance with the dictionary definition.

The bigger and more powerful the grouping becomes, the more practical the definition becomes. Which is why it could be a useful designation for an entity with psychological control over 2,000,000,000+ people, but not so much for a football league with ~100 people (though technically it still can be called a governing body).

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You quoted that dictionary definition in another comment:

>Government: the governing body of a nation, state, or community.

Just because something purports to be a dictionary doesn't mean its definitions are useful or correct. That's a poor definition because it covers a large number of things that nobody ever uses the word "government" to describe, such as the football club. This is much more precise (from Webster): "the organization, machinery, or agency through which a political unit exercises authority and performs functions and which is usually classified according to the distribution of power within it"

Définitions seem like pointless pedantry to me. People in this thread are using the term "government" in an usual way. They are describing a system, and a government is a good simplification of what they mean.

It's a gross oversimplification of what they mean. I don't see how pointing that out is "pointless pedantry".

The definition you cherry picked still seems to describe the management of Facebook. What specific part of the definition do you think excludes FB from being called a government?

>nobody ever uses the word "government" to describe, such as the football club.

FIFA manages football teams, and it describes itself as a government:

>The Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA; French for "International Federation of Association Football") is an association which describes itself as an international governing body of association football, futsal, and beach soccer.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/FIFA

I picked that definition because it's precise, whereas yours was vague. Not all definitions are of equal quality, and choosing a good one over a poor one is not "cherry picking".

Specifically, Facebook is not managed by a "political unit". It's managed by its owners, who have authority over it because it is their property and they have property rights. Governments do not own their citizens. They only have authority because citizens agree, whether voluntarily or through intimidation, to respect that authority.

And no, FIFA does not call itself a government. It calls itself a "governing body" in the text you just quoted. That is not the same thing, and their choice of wording is deliberate. I will concede that they are much, much closer to being a government than Facebook, though, by virtue of their organizational structure and how they derive their authority.

Not that that's relevant to my previous example of a football club. We both know I meant a group of people who get together after work to play for fun, and that the people "in charge" of that are obviously not a government. Claiming that that's false because it's not 100% true for FIFA is a pretty egregious straw man.

>Specifically, Facebook is not managed by a "political unit". It's managed by its owners, who have authority over it because it is their property and they have property rights. Governments do not own their citizens. They only have authority because citizens agree, whether voluntarily or through intimidation, to respect that authority.

You're comparing apples (FB code) to oranges (citizens). A fair comparison would be users to citizens, or platform code to national territory.

Facebook does not own it's users just like a government doesn't own it citizens. A nation owns the land within it's boundaries just like FB owns the code on it's platform.

>And no, FIFA does not call itself a government. It calls itself a "governing body" in the text you just quoted. That is not the same thing

Again, a government is literally defined as governing body, even thougg you don't like it. Do you think there is a government that doesn't have a governing body?

>We both know I meant a group of people who get together after work to play for fun, and that the people "in charge" of that are obviously not a government. Claiming that that's false because it's not 100% true for FIFA is a pretty egregious straw man.

Claiming that we cannot call Facebook a government because a local football club is not typically called a government is itself an egregious strawman; apples to oranges again. FIFA is a far more comparable to an international entity like Facebook, isn't it?

Your ability to twist my words into the argument you wish I was making instead of the one I'm actually making is impressive. Infuriating, but impressive.

I will try to make this as simple as possible.

Facebook owns its platform (code, hardware, etc.). I own a house.

If someone posts on Facebook, they have the right to remove that post. That is their right over their property (the platform). If someone graffitis the wall of my house, I have the right to remove that graffiti. That is my right over my property (my house).

If Facebook wishes to punish the person (say they posted something illegal), they have to invoke the authority of the actual government. Facebook has no authority over people beyond how they interact with Facebook's property. If I wish to punish the graffiti artist, I must invoke the authority of the actual government. I have no authority over people beyond how they interact with my property. The government does, even though the country that the government serves is not its "property".

That is the difference between property ownership and governance, and it is why neither I nor Facebook are governments.

I don't know how I can make this any simpler, and I don't wish to waste any more time engaging with the umpteenth strawman you're going to throw up, so I'm going to leave it at that.

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