Facebook, of course, isn’t really a sovereign nation. Still, one could make the case that at least to millions of young people – who visit the site a dozen or more times per day, take their cultural cues from the site, use it as their communications infrastructure to their social groups, and define their self-worth by how they are rated by others on the site – it is has become a de facto, virtual, second country to which they owe a special kind of allegiance…

Indeed, any other mass movement that had managed to gather up 300 million adherents in less than a decade would likely be seen as a global and national threat. Law enforcement would be mobilized, laws would be passed, children warned in classrooms. It would be the new Red Menace, or Sputnik, or the modern day Why Johnny Can’t Read. But again, by its very nature, a phenomenon like FaceBook is perceived as small and personal, benign and a little goofy, run by a small team of 20-Somethings and their nerdy CEO/founder Mark Zuckerberg. How can you possibly take it too seriously?