>what makes Facebook special In your scenario they seem to be the place other people are "discovering" and downloading the PDF from. Perhaps gathering togethe

>what makes Facebook special In your scenario they seem to be the place other people are "discovering" and downloading the PDF from. Perhaps gathering together to discuss whatever is in the PDF and reinforce each other's beliefs about the content. This could of course be done with a website/blog/forums but the reach of Facebook is of course immense, global and pervasive in pretty much every country. So Facebook is different because of its scale, network effect and ease of discoverability. The last issue with Facebook I would point out is that due to its corporate structure and size Facebook is only accountable to Mark Zuckerberg, and Mark Zuckerberg is accountable to no one. I think the real issue facing society is that Facebook will always err on the side of user engagement unless forced to behave otherwise. If Facebook was really just about "connecting people" which I take to be innocuous communication between users and sharing pictures of kids/pets/etc. then they would have to strip out the features that allow their worst communities to form and operate. But Facebook knows that crazy grandparents sharing conspiracy theories and racist drivel drives engagement and so that content largely remains. It's up to our societies to solve this problem, because history has shown that Facebook will only do the right thing when forced to.