Thankfully you&#x27;re right, Facebook is not—yet—capable of disempowering the entire world by its mere existence. But it does disempower its users, and the more users it gets, the more it disempowers even those who don&#x27;t use the system thanks to those &quot;network effects&quot; that everyone is after.<p>It&#x27;s not inconceivable that at some point some country (perhaps very close to home) might decide that having a Facebook profile is mandatory in order to operate a business. With their Real Name™ policy it might even be useful for registering citizens. You can see this already happening on a smaller scale with some companies <i>requiring</i> Facebook login in order to use their product or service. I see others calling Facebook a &quot;public utility&quot;, seemingly unconscious of where that road leads.<p>Sure, you can say all of that is still &quot;voluntary&quot;. You don&#x27;t need to use that product and you don&#x27;t need to even be a citizen of the United States. You could move to some part of Africa where Facebook has not yet commandeered the social infrastructure. But, somewhere around that point I think most would agree that the word &quot;voluntary&quot; ceases to have any real meaning.