passn

"Zuckerberg's vision of Facebook as a good thing for the world was a lie" - That is such a broad generalization. In the developing world where I live Facebook gives me the opportunity to maintain contact with my family who live on the other side of the world, as I walk the streets of São Paulo, for free. There are hundreds of millions of others like me who keep in contact with their family because of Facebook (and the companies they own). The alternative (cel phone calls and sms) is literally an inch away on our smartphone, but it is such bad quality and so expensive its unusable. For all of us, Facebook is definitely a good thing.

"A death sentence" is exaggerating but just as in any city of 20m people in the developing world there will be some very dangerous areas.

Just because an enormous city has some dangerous areas does not mean it is not a "normal, functioning, society". It also doesn't mean it should be equated to the middle east, assumed to be the same as the other 32 countries on the continent.

“Basically Latin America has been like the entire Middle East for the last 10 years.” This is a gross generalization. There are over 600 million people in Latin America and 33 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean. Each has had different levels of development, violence and corruption, and overall are vastly improved over the past 10-20 years. Brazil, the largest country in Latam, despite its problems has still grown GDP per capita almost by 100% since 2006, and is making enormous progress in the fight against corruption with the ‘Car Wash’ investigations. Mexican GDP per capita has also been steadily improving for 20 years. Over time improvements in security will follow.

“The Navy Seals have done training exercises in the favelas of Brazil; it’s that bad.” The US military trains law enforcement and military in many people in many countries, including countries like Australia and the UK.