The Liberal Church of Facebook

In The Social Network film, Justin Timberlake's character Sean Parker had a quote: "Facebook is always changing." This really stuck out to me as one of the most important quotes in the film, and it certainly holds true regarding the site. Some little changes like those made to user settings and the chat function sometimes go unnoticed, but the big ones always cause quite a significant response, sometimes even an uproar, among the user base. The one I especially remember was the forced integration of the "Timeline" feature a few years ago. At first, many users were resistant to the change, but eventually the commotion died down and the Timeline became just another normality. With changes such as these being made regularly, the Facebook many of us know and use today is extremely different from Facebook at its inception.

This got me thinking about Facebook as compared to a religion in the broad sense. Members of pretty much any religion can be divided into two camps: Orthodox and liberal. Orthodox believers practice their religion as close to its "original" state as possible. Their argument is that the foundations and practices on which their faith was originally based should not be expanded upon or taken liberties with; they conservatively adhere to a strict set of rules with no exceptions. More liberal sects, on the other hand, believe that their religion should change and evolve to accommodate the changing times, but still maintain a "core" of beliefs. If the foundations and beliefs of a religion were themselves allowed to change, the religion itself would become irrelevant. However, this raises the obvious ever-ongoing dispute of what these foundations are and how they are determined. What should and shouldn't be allowed to change?

     <----------   VS  ----------------->
        (Are they really that different?)







If Facebook was likened to one of these religious camps, it would obviously be liberal. It's always finding something to change and "improve," even though many users would be quite content with the way it already is! What, then, would be Facebook's "core" values? I'd say it is security of personal information. No matter how much Facebook has changed and allowed people to provide more and more information about themselves, their interests, their location, and so on, CEO and founder Mark Zuckerburg maintains that Facebook will not reveal any information about its users to any outside parties. If this were to ever change, I believe Facebook would crumble, just as a religion with no foundation would cease to be relevant. No longer would its users feel safe about providing their information, since it would make them victims of targeted advertisements and promotions that would get in their way of connecting with people they want to interact with and communicating things they want to share. Sure, Facebook would make a massive amount of money in a short time, but in the long run, users would abandon it because it would cease to be "cool."