Facebook and government

Finally I’ve decided on writing a brief note about this interesting topic, as a continuation of my recent wall post.
Sure, the “controlled Facebook” idea hadn’t crossed my mind before my friend -too fond of conspiracy theories- suggested it (well, actually he didn’t suggest, but affirmed): “Facebook belongs to the CIA”, he told me. My inmediate thought, for the first few seconds, was that of “Oh, my God!, people are so crazy about these fantasies of global conspiracies for controlling the planet, and such”. But somehow, a moment later, the idea struck me as a very plausible, reasonable and even logical one.
But before further writing, let me make clear that the words in which my friend put it are, for me, an oversimplification. It’s not necessarily that “Facebook belongs to the CIA”. Theoretically, it belongs to Facebook, Inc, but this one may in turn “belong” to any other corporation, private or governmental, civil or military, USAn or Israeli or NATOish… It may have started with the private initiative of its supposed founder (and Zuckerberg, isn’t that a jewish surname?), but… was he independent? And even if he was, once the project took off, can’t it have been taken over by some much more powerful corporation?
However it all begun, now Facebook exists, and who can categorically affirm, who can be totally sure, that it’s not used and/or even controlled by one (or several) of the suggested organisms? Only think of it for a moment: a database with more than 400 million people’s profiles, constantly, personally and willingly updated by ourselves, our most recent pictures, complete albums, where have we been, where we are, where are we going, who are we connected to, our phone numbers, email addresses, IM users, home address, school, college, opinions, family, thoughts, the letters we write… all that information, present and past (who guarantees that whenever we “delete” something from FB, it gets really deleted from the database?), is probably as vast as any country’s police/military/intelligence/governmental classified files, and surely more accurate and trustworthy. Which agency would resist the temptation of taking it under control?
More yet: wouldn’t it be, from the point of view of the responsible ones, the “people up there”, the big bosses, Uncle Sam, call it however you like, wouldn’t it be an unforgivable (and punishable) negligence NOT TO control Facebook? Well, if I were one of those allmighty ones, I think I’d crucify a bunch of subordinates if they couldn’t put in my hands the reins of such power, the keys of that treasure…
As a side argument, it has all the time struck me, since I joined Facebook, how little publicity there is in this website. Where do the “owners” get the money from for this huge project?
Of course, all this is but a reflection. I’d love to hear of any sensible argument pro or against this ideas of mine…

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