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New Facebook Page Promotes World Peace

by Amar Toor on October 28, 2009 at 02:25 PM

Now that Facebook has effectively taken over the world, Mark Zuckerberg & Co. have put on their stewardship caps and decided to try and make it a better place, too.

With the launch of a new hub called Peace on Facebook, the social networking site hopes to provide a space for dialogue and conflict resolution, and, ultimately, end all human conflict. Forever. According to the site, the feature (which appears to be an off-shoot of a new Stanford-based initiative called Peace Dot) aims to enable "people from diverse backgrounds to easily connect and share their ideas," thus mitigating "world conflict in the short and long term."

For the moment, the Peace hub features links to anti-violence activist groups, statistics of Facebook friendships forged across historically embattled ethnic and religious lines, and polls asking whether or not world peace is really all that possible. There's also a 'Share Your Thoughts' widget, similar to the status update widget the site unveiled a few months back, and a link back to 'Facebook for Good,' a nonprofit site that was launched last spring when membership surpassed 200 million.

It's not like this is the first time Facebook has grown a political conscience. During the last presidential election, the site hosted a few media and voter-registration partnerships. Last summer, as the Iranian uprising raged, administrators put together a Facebook in Farsi when it became clear that social networking was an increasingly crucial means of communication. This latest stab at universal happiness and brotherhood may smack of Lennonian idealism -- an optimism that many may find hard to swallow as we face harsher, pragmatic realities. But hey, why not? Facebook might be the most powerful connective tool we have, so it might as well try to engender some goodwill and chip away at deeply ingrained conflicts. We'd personally prefer to see a more Woodstock and less widgets at this Peace Party, but we're still willing to give the effort, and peace, a chance. [From: CNET News]

Tags: conflict, facebook, peace, peace on facebook, PeaceOnFacebook, top, war

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