The Daily Beast has some fascinating emails shedding light on this. Alexis dissects them:
The gymnastics of the Facebook's recent dealing remind me of a 1995 paper written by science and technology studies scholar Melvin Kranzberg. He proposed a series of "laws" and this was the first:
"Technology is neither good nor bad; nor is it neutral."
Perhaps Facebook could have stayed neutral if it had been solely used by privileged college kids, but as its deployed around the world, local users are adapting it to meet their challenges, which are often larger than finding someone to make out with.
2006-2011 archives for The Daily Dish, featuring Andrew Sullivan