Iceland's Letting Its Facebook Users Help Write Their New Constitution

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What could possibly go wrong here! Facebook, the same place where people drunkenly message their exes and solicit assassins, is now going to birth Iceland's next constitution. The government wants user feedback while they make a new one. Prudent.

So the Icelandic people will pitch ideas on The Book, The Guardian reports, and the drafters will (potentially) incorporate these ideas into their fresh founding document. Is this a bad idea? The country's government pretty much collapsed in the wake of the global recession, so things probably can't get much worse. Now I'm sure the Icelandic are a wonderful bunch, and as two thirds of their population uses Facebook, this is potentially a good way to inject some democracy in the regime's jugular. Nonetheless—I can't help but shudder at the idea of Facebook being used toward anything that might affect the future of an entire country, given the internet's tendency to yank out the most jerk-y and looney tendencies in us. I wouldn't look for a wife on Color, and I wouldn't look for a government on Facebook. [Guardian via Motherboard]