"You can compare Donald McDuck to an asteroid if you like. But that doesn't make it meaningful just because you said so." Indeed. You may not have noticed that

"You can compare Donald McDuck to an asteroid if you like. But that doesn't make it meaningful just because you said so." Indeed. You may not have noticed that in order for a comparison to become meaningful, you have to point out the similarities that you think are relevant to your argument. Which is what I did with the externalities of a dictatorship and the externalities of a social network, but which you unfortunately failed to do for your comparison. "I didn't make a claim, I just stated the obvious." You very much made the claim that "I can say that if Zuckerberg didn't invent Facebook in ~ 2004, it would have been invented by now, [...]". Given that I question that claim, it's obviously pointless to then just claim that it's obvious. If I thought it was obvious, I probably would not have questioned it. "Any similar, privacy-oriented social network that has then less 10% of Facebook's adoption is obviously not doing well as a FB competitor." Sure, and now, please demonstrate that there was no reasonably reachable path that would have led to a different outcome. Before you answer, please read and understand http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Path_dependence http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Path_dependence and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_effect http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_effect . "I understand what you're saying, but you're whining about a choice because you don't like either outcome :-) ... That's a pretty much standard situation and applies to virtually anything I can think of." Your point being? Something that's bad becomes good if you (supposedly) can't change it?