While that is true, it's hardly the end of the story. This is all a bit slipperyslopey and devilsadvocatey, and definitely a 2am runon sentence, but when busin

While that is true, it's hardly the end of the story. This is all a bit slipperyslopey and devilsadvocatey, and definitely a 2am runon sentence, but when businesses maintain the most extensive and authoritative identity rosters on the planet (having millions of realtime and historical data points about each individual), and those businesses serve as the primary soapbox for citizens to shout from, and the businesses increasingly act as independent states, we may need to reevaluate how we make sure those businesses behave, and we may need to expand the definition of "behave". Looking to the near-ish future: I expect Facebook to show all the "important" stories in my news feed - but as they continue to tweak what's "important", what happens if they hide everything related to a specific topic (be it Facebook redesign moaning, Ron Paul, Falun Gong...), effectively removing it from the public discourse? At the scale they currently have and will achieve, is their obligation to provide the "right" content mandated by user engagement metrics, PR, or just what advertisers will pay the most money for? What if they'd like to nudge an election? It may be user engagement metrics are all that's necessary - Google+ is doing its best to prove folks won't use what they don't like. It may be that fiddling with newsfeed content is all it takes for Facebook's future as "that thing people used for a while after MySpace" to emerge. Or maybe something else happens. All I'm saying is this isn't quite so open and shut. Oh man. I need to get some sleep before I start thinking I make any sense.