I get the feeling no matter what comparison I make, you'd call it misleading, because that's really splitting at hairs. The thrust of the comment and the point of referencing Armenia's GDP was the scale of the figures. I've now edited it out since apparently nobody can address my point without slapping around the GDP comparison, as if it's important I get every word of my comment exactly right regardless of the point.
Imagine what the $11 billion one would spend to purchase Pinterest could do in other areas, such as the developing world, our inner cities, public infrastructure. That's the point. Is that up front enough and leading you in the right direction, or am I still being misleading?
Put another way, why do we value an online marketing tool at $11 billion and people efforting some real change like feeding starving children have to struggle for a meager five figure grant? And why are people here so hell-bent on feeding into it and silencing people like me who just have questions about it? Am I the only one that has ethical questions about spending my engineering career contributing to a market that values image distribution to push products and fuel consumerism at about the same order of magnitude as SpaceX?
You can look at me with a straight face and say that Pinterest deserves to be valued at $11 billion for what, its user count? Its potential to open up new revenue streams for advertisers? Same with Snapchat, same with Instagram. I feel like our priorities are broken, and that's all I'm saying, and as much as all of my comments are flirting with being grayed out, it feels pretty hopeless and depressing to be the only one, apparently.