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No 92: Facebook is many things, but a “community” it ain’t
One of the favourite phrases of Mark Zuckerberg is “the Facebook community”. Facebook is many things, but a community it is not. It’s a social network, which is something quite different. In a social network (online or off), people are connected by pre-existing personal relationships. Communities, on the other hand, are complex social systems because they consist of people from different walks of life who may have no personal connections at all. A good example is the English village where I live. I am friends with some villagers, and know my neighbours pretty well. But there are many others in the village whom I don’t know and with whom I may have little in common. But there’s no doubt that they and I are all members of the same community.
Online groups confirm the power of homophily – the tendency of individuals to associate and bond with others of similar ilk. Facebook provides a framework that contains innumerable homophilic groups. But it isn’t a community in any meaningful sense of the world.
-- Why we need a 21st-century Martin Luther to challenge the church of tech | Technology | The Guardian